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LORD BACON 



LORD MACAULAY 



LONDON 

LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 

1873 



Ma 



LONDON ; PRINTED BY 

SPOTTI8WOODB AND CO., NEW-STREET 8QT7AKS 

AND PARLIAMENT STHBBT 



Univ. of 
FEB 3 



LOUD BACON, 

(July, 1837.) 



The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England. A new 
Edition. By Basil Montagu, Esq. 16 vols. 8vo. London: 
1825—1834. 

We return our hearty thanks to Mr. Montagu for this truly 
valuable work. From the opinions which he expresses as a 
biographer we often dissent. But about his merit as a collector 
of the materials out of which opinions are formed, there can be 
no dispute ; and we readily acknowledge that we are in a great 
measure indebted to his minute-and accurate researches for the 
means of refuting what we cannot but consider as his errors. 

The labour which has been bestowed on this volume has been 
a labour of love. The writer is evidently enamoured of the 
subject. It fills his heart. It constantly overflows from his lips 
and his pen. Those who are acquainted with the Courts in 
which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success 
well know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law 
by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, 
from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum. The Life 
before us doubtless owes much of its value to the honest and 
generous enthusiasm of the writer. This feeling has stimulated 
his activity, has sustained his perseverance, has called forth all 
his ingenuity and eloquence : but, on the other hand, we must 
frankly say that it has, to a great extent, perverted his judg- 
ment. 

A 2 



4 LORD BACON. 

We are by no means without sympathy for Mr. Montagu 
even in what we consider as his weakness. There is scarcely any 
delusion which has a better claim to be indulgently treated than 
that under the influence of which a man ascribes every moral 
excellence to those who have left imperishable monuments of 
their genius. The causes of this error lie deep in the inmost 
recesses of human nature. We are all inclined to judge of others 
as we find them. Our estimate of a character always depends 
much on the manner in which that character affects our interests 
and passions. We find it difficult to think well of those by 
whom we are thwarted or depressed ; and we are ready to admit 
every excuse for the vices of those who are useful or agreeable 
to us. This is, we believe, one of those illusions to which the 
whole human race is subject, and which experience and reflection 
can only partially remove. It is, in the phraseology of Bacon, 
one of the idola tribus. Hence it is that the moral character of 
a man eminent in letters or in the fine arts is treated, often 
by contemporaries, almost always by posterity, with extraordi- 
nary tenderness. The world derives pleasure and advantage 
from the performances of such a man. The number of those 
who suffer by his personal vices is small, even in his own time, 
when compared with the number of those to whom his talents 
are a source of gratification. In a few years all those whom he 
has injured disappear. But his works remain, and are a source 
of delight to millions. The genius of Sallust is still with us- 
But the Numidians whom he plundered, and the unfortunate 
husbands who caught him in their houses at unseasonable hours, 
are forgotten. We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the 
keenness of Clarendon's observation, and by the sober majesty 
of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the 
historian. Falstaff and Tom Jones have survived the game- 
keepers whom Shakspeare cudgelled and the landladies whom 
Fielding bilked. A great writer is the friend and benefactor of 
his readers ; and they cannot but judge of him under the delud- 



LORD BACON. 5 

ing influence of friendship and gratitude. We all know how 
unwilling we are to admit the truth of any disgraceful story 
about a person whose society we like, and from whom we have 
received favours ; how long we struggle against evidence, how 
fondly, when the facts cannot be disputed, we cling to the hope 
that there may be some explanation or some extenuating circum 
stance with which we are unacquainted. Just such is the feeling 
which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards 
the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to 
them is incalculable. They have guided him to truth. They 
have filled his mind with noble and graceful images. They have 
stood by him in all vicissitudes, comforters in sorrow, nurses in 
sickness, companions in solitude. These friendships are exposed 
to no danger from the occurrences by which other attachments 
are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on ; fortune is incon- 
stant ; tempers are soured ; bonds which seemed indissoluble 
are daily sundered by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. 
But no such cause can affect the silent converse which we hold 
with the highest of human intellects. That placid intercourse 
is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These are the 
old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the 
same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With 
the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change. 
Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demo- 
sthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long* 
No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero. No 
heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet. 

Nothing, then, can be more natural than that a person endowed 
with sensibility and imagination should entertain a respectful 
and affectionate feeling towards those great men with whose 
minds he holds daily communion. Yet nothing can be more 
certain than that such men have not always deserved to be 
regarded with respect or affection. Some writers, whose works 

will continue to instruct and delight mankind to the remotest 
a :5 



6 LORD BACON. 

ages, have been placed in such situations that their actions and 
motives are as well known to us as the actions and motives of 
one human being can be known to another ; and unhappily their 
conduct has not always been such as an impartial judge can con- 
template with approbation. But the fanaticism of the devout 
worshipper of genius is proof against all evidence and all argu- 
ment. The character of his idol is matter of faith ; and the 
province of faith is not to be invaded by reason. He maintains 
his superstition with a credulity as boundless, and a zeal as un- 
scrupulous, as can be found in the most ardent partisans of 
religious or political factions. The most decisive proofs are 
rejected ; the plainest rules of morality are explained away ; 
extensive and important portions of history are completely dis- 
torted. The enthusiast misrepresents facts with all the effrontery 
of an advocate, and confounds right and wrong with all the 
dexterity of a Jesuit ; and all this only in order that some man 
who has been in his grave during many ages may have a fairer 
character than he deserves. 

Middleton's Life of Cicero is a striking instance of the in- 
fluence of this sort of partiality. Never was there a character 
which it was easier to read than that of Cicero. Never was 
there a mind keener or more critical than that of Middleton. 
Had the biographer brought to the examination of his favourite 
statesman's conduct but a very small part of the acuteness and 
severity which he displayed when he was engaged in investigat- 
ing the high pretensions of Epiphanius and Justin Martyr, he 
could not have failed to produce a most valuable history of a 
most interesting portion of time. But this most ingenious and 
learned man, though 

" So wary held and wise 
That, as 'twas said, he scarce received 
For gospel what the church believed," 

had a superstition of his own. The great Iconoclast was himself 



LOED BACON. 7 

aa idolater. The great Avvocato del Diavolo, while he dis- 
puted, with no small ability, the claims of Cyprian and 
Athanasius to a place in the Calendar, was himself composing a 
lying legend in honour of St. Tully. He was holding up as a 
model of every virtue a man whose talents and acquirements, 
indeed, can never be too highly extolled, and who was by no 
means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was 
under the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions 
for which Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advo- 
cates, could contrive no excuse, actions which in his confidential 
correspondence he mentioned with remorse and shame, are re- 
presented by his biographer as wise, virtuous, heroic. The 
whole history of that great revolution which overthrew the 
Roman aristocracy, the whole state of parties, the character of 
every public man, is elaborately misrepresented, in order to 
make out something which may look like a defence of one most 
eloquent and accomplished trimmer. 

The volume before us reminds us now and then of the Lite 
of Cicero. But there is this marked diiference. Dr. Middleton 
evidently had an uneasy consciousness of the weakness of his 
cause, and therefore resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to 
unpardonable distortions and suppressions of facts. Mr. Mon- 
tagu's faith is sincere and implicit. He practises no trickery. 
He conceals nothing. He puts the facts before us in the full 
confidence that they will produce on our minds the effect which 
they have produced on his own. It is not till he comes to 
reason from facts to motives that his partiality shows itself; and 
then he leaves Middleton himself far behind. His work pro- 
ceeds on the assumption that Bacon was an eminently virtuous 
man. From the tree Mr. Montagu judges of the fruit. He is 
forced to relate many actions which, if any man but Bacon had 
committed them, nobody would have dreamed of defending, 
actions which are readily and completely explained by supposing 
Bacon to have been a man whose principles were not strict, and 



8 LORD BACON. 

whose spirit was not high, actions which can be explained in 
no other way without resorting to some grotesque hypothesis 
for which there is not a tittle of evidence. But any hypothesis 
is, in Mr. Montagu's opinion, more probable than that his hero 
should ever have done any thing very wrong. 

This mode of defending Bacon seems to us by no means 
Baconian. To take a man's character for granted, and ther 
from his character to infer the moral quality of all his actions, 
is surely a process the very reverse of that which is recom- 
mended in the Novum Organum. Nothing, we are sure, could 
have led Mr. Montagu to depart so far from his master's pre- 
cepts, except zeal for his master's honour. We shall follow a 
different course. We shall attempt, with the valuable assistance 
which Mr. Montagu has afforded us, to frame such an account 
of Bacon's life as may enable our readers correctly to estimate 
his character. 

It is hardly necessary to say that Francis Bacon was the son 
of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who held the great seal of England 
during the first twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth. The 
fame of the father has been thrown into shade by that of the 
son. But Sir Nicholas was no ordinary man. He belonged 
to a set of men whom it is easier to describe collectively than 
separately, whose minds were formed by one system of disci- 
pline, who belonged to one rank in society, to one university, 
to one party, to one sect, to one administration, and who re- 
sembled each other so much in talents, in opinions, in habits, in 
fortunes, that one character, we had almost said one life, may, 
to a considerable extent, serve for them all. 

They were the first generation of statesmen by profession 
that England produced. Before their time the division of 
labour had, in this respect, been very imperfect. Those who 
had directed public affairs had been, with few exceptions 
warriors or priests, warriors whose rude courage was neither 
guided by science nor softened by humanity, priests whose 



LORD BACON. » 

learning and abilities were habitually devoted to the defence of 
tyranny and imposture. The Hotspurs, the Nevilles, the 
Cliffords, rough, illiterate, and unreflecting, brought to the 
council-board the fierce and imperious disposition which they 
had acquired amidst the tumult of predatory war, or in the 
gloomy repose of the garrison and moated castle. On the 
other side was the calm and subtle prelate, versed in all that 
was then considered as learning, trained in the Schools to 
manage words, and in the confessional to manage hearts, seldom 
superstitious, but skilful in practising on the supsrstition of 
others, false, as it was natural that a man should be whose pro- 
fession imposed on all who were not saints the necessity of 
being hypocrites, selfish, as it was natural that a man should be 
who could form no domestic ties, and cherish no hope of legi- 
timate posterity, more attached to his order than to his country, 
and guiding the politics of England with a constant side-glance 
at Rome. 

But the increase of wealth, the progress of knowledge, and 
the reformation of religion produced a great change. The 
nobles ceased to be military chieftains ; the priests ceased to 
possess a monopoly of learning ; and a new and remarkable 
species of politicians appeared. 

These men came from neither of the classes which had, till 
then, almost exclusively furnished the ministers of state. They 
were all laymen ; yet they were all men of learning ; and they 
were all men of peace. They were not members of the aris- 
tocracy. They inherited no titles, no large domains, no armies 
of retainers, no fortified castles. Yet they were not low men, 
such as those whom princes, jealous of the power of a nobility, 
have sometimes raised from forges and cobblers' stalls to the 
highest situations. They were all gentlemen by birth. They 
had all received a liberal education. It is a remarkable fact 
that they were all members of the same university. The two 
great national seats of learning had even then acquired the 



10 LORD BACON. 

characters which they still retain. In intellectual activity, and 
in readiness to admit improvements, the superiority was then, 
as it has ever since been, on the side of the less ancient and 
splendid institution. Cambridge had the honour of educating 
those celebrated Protestant Bishops whom Oxford had the 
honour of burning ; and at Cambridge were formed the minds 
of all those statesmen to whom chiefly is to be attributed the 
secure establishment of the reformed religion in the north of 
Europe. 

The statesmen of whom we speak passed their youth sur- 
rounded by the incessant din of theological controversy. 
Opinions were still in a state of chaotic anarchy, intermingling, 
separating, advancing, receding. Sometimes the stubborn 
bigotry of the Conservatives seemed likely to prevail. Then 
the impetuous onset of the Reformers for a moment carried all 
before it. Then again the resisting mass made a desperate 
stand, arrested the movement, and forced it slowly back. The 
vacillation which at that time appeared in English legislation, 
and which it has been the fashion to attribute to the caprice 
and to the power of one or two individuals was truly a national 
vacillation. It was not only in the mind of Henry that the 
new theology obtained the ascendant one day, and the lessons 
of the nurse and of the priest regained their influence on the 
morrow. It was not only in the House of Tudor that the hus- 
band was exasperated by the opposition of the wife, that the 
son dissented from the opinions of the father, that the brother 
persecuted the sister, that one sister persecuted another. The 
principles of Conservation and Reform carried on their warfare 
in every part of society, in every congregation, in every school 
of learning, round the hearth of every private family, in the 
recesses of every reflecting mind. 

It was in the midst of this ferment that the minds of the per- 
sons whom we are describing were developed. They were born 
Reformers. They belonged by nature to that order of men who 



LORD BACON. 11 

always form the front ranks in the great intellectual progress. 
They were therefore, one and all, Protestants. In religious mat- 
ters, however, though there is no reason to doubt that they were 
sincere, they were by no means zealous. None of them chose to 
run the smallest personal risk during the reign of Mary. None 
of them favoured the unhappy attempt of Northumberland in 
favour of his daughter-in-law. None of them shared in the des- 
perate councils of Wyatt. They contrived to have business on 
the Continent ; or, if they staid in Enghind, they heard mass 
and kept Lent with great decorum. When those dark and 
perilous years had gone by, and when the crown had descended 
to a new sovereign, they took the lead in the reformation of 
the Church. But they proceeded, not with the impetuosity of 
theologians, but with the calm determination of statesmen. 
They acted, not like men who considered the Romish worship as 
a system too offensive to God, and too destructive of souls to be 
tolerated for an hour, but like men who regarded the points in 
dispute among Christians as in themselves unimportant, and 
who were not restrained by any scruple of conscience from pro- 
fessing, as they had before professed, the Catholic faith of Mary, 
the Protestant faith of Edward, or any of the numerous inter- 
mediate combinations which the caprice of Henry and the servile 
policy of Cranmer had formed out of the doctines of both the 
hostile parties. They took a deliberate view of the state of their 
own country and of the Continent : they satisfied themselves as 
to the leaning of the public mind ; and they chose their side. 
They placed themselves at the head of the Protestants of Europe, 
and staked all their fame and fortunes on the success of their 
party. 

It is needless to relate how dexterously, how resolutely, how 
gloriously they directed the politics of England during the 
eventful years which followed, how they succeeded in uniting 
their friends and separating their enemies, how they humbled 
the pride of Philip, how they backed the unconquerable spirit 



12 LORD BACON. 

of Coligni, how they rescued Holland from tyranny, how they 
founded the maritime greatness of their country, how they out- 
witted the artful politicians of Italy, and tamed the ferocious 
chieftains of Scotland. It is impossible to deny that they com- 
mitted many acts which would justly bring on a statesman of 
our time censures of the most serious kind. But, when we con- 
sider the state of morality in their age, and the unscrupulous 
character of the adversaries against whom they had to contend, 
we are forced to admit that it is not without reason that their 
names are still held in veneration by their countrymen. 

There were, doubtless, many diversities in their intellectual 
and moral character. But there was a strong family likeness. 
The constitution of their minds was remarkably sound. No 
particular faculty was preeminently developed ; but manly 
health and vigour were equally diffused through the whole. 
They were men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by 
exercise well fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by 
circumstances, rather than by any strong bias of inclination, 
that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. In 
active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from 
the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No men observed 
more accurately the signs of the times. No men had a greater 
practical acquaintance with human nature. Their policy was 
generally characterized rather by vigilance, by moderation, and 
by firmness, than by invention, or by the spirit of enterprise. 

They spoke and wrote in a manner worthy of their excellent 
sense. Their eloquence was less copious and less ingenious, but 
far purer and more manly than that of the succeeding gene- 
ration. It was the eloquence of men who had lived with the 
first translators of the Bible, and with the authors of the Book 
of Common Prayer. It was luminous, dignified, solid, and very 
slightly tainted with that affectation which deformed the style 
of the ablest men of the next age. If, as sometimes chanced, 
these politicians were under the necessity of taking a part in 



LORD BACON. 13 

the theological controversies on which the dearest interests of 
kingdoms were then staked, they acquitted themselves as if 
their whole lives had been passed in the Schools and the Con- 
vocation. 

There was something in the temper of these celebrated men 
which secured them against the proverbial inconstancy both of 
the court and of the multitude. No intrigue, no combinations 
of rivals, could deprive them of the confidence of their 
Sovereign. No parliament attacked their influence. No mob 
coupled their names with any odious grievance. Their power 
ended only with their lives. In this respect, their fate presents 
a most remarkable contrast to that of the enterprising and 
brilliant politicians of the preceding and of the succeeding gene- 
ration. Burleigh was minister during forty years. Sir Nicholas 
Bacon held the great seal more than twenty years. Sir Walter 
Mildmay was Chancellor of the Exchequer twenty-three years. 
Sir Thomas Smith was Secretary of State eighteen years ; Sir 
Francis Walsingham about as long. They all died in office, and 
in the enjoyment of public respect and royal favour. Far dif- 
ferent had been the fate of Wolsey, Cromwell, Norfolk, 
Somerset, and Northumberland. Far different also was the fate 
of Essex, of Raleigh, and of the still more illustrious man whose 
life we propose to consider. 

The explanation of this circumstance is perhaps contained in 
the motto which Sir Nicholas Bacon inscribed over the entrance 
of his hall at Gorhambury, Mediocria firma. This maxim was 
constantly borne in mind by himself and his colleagues. They 
were more solicitous to lay the foundations of their power deep 
than to raise the structure to a conspicuous but insecure height. 
None of them aspired to be sole Minister. None of them pro- 
voked envy by an ostentatious display of wealth and influence. 
None of them affected to outshine the ancient aristocracy of the 
kingdom. They were free from that childish love of titles 
which characterized the successful courtiers of the generation 



14 LORD BACON. 

which preceded them, and of that which followed them. Only 
one of those whom we have named was made a peer ; and he 
was content with the lowest degree of the peerage. As to 
money, none of them could, in that age, justly be considered as 
rapacious. Some of them would, even in our time, deserve the 
praise of eminent disinterestedness. Their fidelity to the State 
was incorruptible. Their private morals were without stain. 
Their households were sober and well-governed. 

Among these statesmen Sir Nicholas Bacon was generally 
considered as ranking next to Burleigh. He was called by 
Camden " Sacris conciliis alterum columen ;" and by George 
Buchanan, 

" diu Britannici 
Kegni secundum columen." 

The second wife of Sir Nicholas and mother of Francis Bacon 
was Anne, one of the daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, a man 
of distinguished learning who had been tutor to Edward the 
Sixth. Sir Anthony had paid considerable attention to the 
education of his daughters, and lived to see them all splendidly 
and happily married. Their classical acquirements made them 
conspicuous even among the women of fashion of that age. 
Katherine, who became Lady Killigrew, wrote Latin Hexameters 
and Pentameters which would appear with credit in the Musce 
Etonenses. Mildred, the wife of Lord Burleigh, was described 
by Roger Ascham as the best Greek scholar among the young 
women of England, Lady Jane Grey always excepted. Anne, 
the mother of Francis Bacon, was distinguished both as a lin- 
guist and as a theologian. She corresponded in Greek with 
Bishop Jewel, and translated his Apologia from the Latin, so 
correctly that neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest 
a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on 
fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This 
fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small 
and audacious band of Italian reformers, anathematized alike by 



LORD BACON. 15 

Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which 
the Socinian sect deduces its origin. 

Lady Bacon was doubtless a lady of highly cultivated mind 
after the fashion of her age. But we must not suffer ourselves 
to be deluded into the belief that she and her sisters were more 
accomplished women than many who are now living. On this 
subject there is, we think, much misapprehension. We have 
often heard men who wish, as almost all men of sense wish, that 
women should be highly educated, speak with rapture of the 
English ladies of the sixteenth century, and lament that they 
can find no modern damsel resembling those fair pupils of 
Ascham and Aylmer who compared, over their embroidery, the 
styles of Isocrates and Lysias, and who, while the horns were 
sounding and the dogs in full cry, sat in the lonely oriel, with 
eyes rivetted to that immortal page which tells how meekly and 
bravely the first great martyr of intellectual liberty took the cup 
from his weeping gaoler. But surely these complaints have 
very little foundation. We would by no means disparage the 
ladies of the sixteenth century or their pursuits. But we con- 
ceive that those who extol them at the expense of the women 
of our time forget one very obvious and very important circum- 
stance. In the time of Henry the Eighth and Edward the 
Sixth, a person who did not read Greek and Latin could read 
nothing, or next to nothing. The Italian was the only modern 
language which possessed any thing that could be called a litera- 
ture. All the valuable books extant in ail the vernacular dialects 
of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf. England did 
not yet possess Shakspeare's plays and the Fairy Queen, nor 
France Montaigne's Essays, nor Spain Don Quixote. In looking 
round a well-furnished library, how many English or French 
books can we find which were extant when Lady Jane Grey and 
Queen Elizabeth received their education ? Chaucer, Gower, 
Froissart, Comines, Rabelais, nearly complete the list. It was 
therefore absolutely necessary that a woman should be unedu- 



16 LORD BACON. 

rated or classically educated. Indeed, without a knowledge of 
one of the ancient languages no person could then have any 
clear notion of what was passing in the political, the literary, 
or the religious world. The Latin was in the sixteenth century 
all and more than all that the French was in the eighteenth. It 
was the language of courts as well as of the schools. It was the 
language of diplomacy ; it was the language of theological and 
political controversy. Being a fixed language, while the living 
languages were in a state of fluctuation, and being universally 
known to the learned and the polite, it was employed by almost 
every writer who aspired to a wide and durable reputation. A 
person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all acquaintance, 
not merely with Cicero and Virgil, not merely with heavy 
treatises on canon-law and school-divinity, but with the most 
interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own 
time, nay even with the most admired poetry and the most po- 
pular squibs which appeared on the fleeting topics of the day, 
with Buchanan's complimentary verses, with Erasmus's dialogues, 
with Hutten's epistles. 

This is no longer the case. All political and religious contro- 
versy is now conducted in the modern languages. The ancient 
tongues are used only in comments on the ancient writers. The 
great productions of Athenian and Roman genius are indeed 
still what they were. But though their positive value is un- 
changed, their relative value, when compared with the whole 
mass of mental wealth possessed by mankind, has been con- 
stantly falling. They were the intellectual all of our ancestors. 
They are but a part of our treasures. Over what tragedy could 
Lady Jane Grey have wept, over what comedy could she have 
smiled, if the ancient dramatists had not been in her library ? 
A modern reader can make shift without OEdipus and Medea, 
while he possesses Othello and Hamlet. If he knows nothing of 
Pyrgopolynices and Thraso, he is familiar with Bobadil, and 
Bessus, and Pistol, and Parolles. If he cannot enjoy the de- 



LORD BACON. 17 

licious irony of Plato, he may find some compensation in that of 
Pascal. If he is shut out from Nephelococcygia, he may take 
refuge in Lilliput. We are guilty, we hope, of no irreverence 
towards those great nations to which the human race owes art, 
science, taste, civil and intellectual freedom, when we say that 
the stock bequeathed by them to us has been so carefully im- 
proved that the accumulated interest now exceeds the principal. 
We believe that the books which have been written in the 
languages of western Europe, during the last two hundred and 
fifty years, — translations from the ancient languages of course 
included, — are of greater value than all the books which at 
the beginning of that period were extant in the world. With 
the modern languages of Europe English women are at least 
as well acquainted as English men. When, therefore, we com- 
pare the acquirements of Lady Jane Grey with those of an 
accomplished young woman of our own time, we have no hesita- 
tion in awarding the superiority to the latter. We hope that 
our readers will pardon this digression. It is long ; but it can 
hardly be called unseasonable, if it t^nds to convince them that 
they are mistaken in thinking that the great-great-grandmothers 
of their great-great-grandmothers were superior women to their 
sisters and their wives. 

Francis Bacon, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas, was born at 
York House, his father's residence in the Strand, on the twenty- 
second of January, 1561. The health of Francis was very 
delicate ; and to this circumstance may be partly attributed that 
gravity of carriage, and that love of sedentary pursuits, which 
distinguished him from other boys. Every body knows how 
much his premature readiness of wit and sobriety of deportment 
amused the Queen, and how she used to call him her young 
Lord Keeper. We are told that, while still a mere child, he 
stole away from his playfellows to a vault in St. James's Fields, 
for the purpose of investigating the cause of a singular echo 
which he had observed there. It is certain that, at only twelve, 



18 LORD BACON. 

he busied himself with very ingenious speculations on the art of 
legerdemain ; a subject which, as Professor Dugald Stewart 
has most justly observed, merits much more attention from 
philosophers than it has ever received. These are trifles. But 
the eminence which Bacon afterwards attained makes them in- 
teresting. 

In the thirteenth year of his age he was entered at Trinity 
College, Cambridge. That celebrated school of learning enjoyed 
the peculiar favour of the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Keeper, 
and acknowledged the advantages which it derived from their 
patronage in a public letter which bears date just a month after 
the admission of Francis Bacon. The master was Whitgift, 
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, a narrow-minded, mean, 
and tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adula- 
tion, and employed it in persecuting both those who agreed with 
Calvin about Church Government, and those who differed from 
Calvin touching the doctrine of Reprobation. He was now in. 
a chrysalis state, putting off the worm and putting on the dra- 
gon-fly, a kind of intermediate grub between sycophant and 
oppressor. He was indemnifying himself for the court which 
he found it expedient to pay to the Ministers by exercising 
much petty tyranny within his own college. It would be unjust, 
however, to deny him the praise of having rendered about this 
time one important service to letters. He stood up manfully 
against those who wished to make Trinity College a mere 
appendage to Westminster School ; and by this act, the only 
good act, as far as we remember, of his long public life, he saved 
the noblest place of education in England from the degrading 
fate of King's College and New College. 

It has often been said that Bacon, while still at college, planned 
that great intellectual revolution with which his name is inse- 
parably connected. The evidence on this subject, however, is 
hardly sufficient to prove what is in itself so improbable as that 
any definite scheme of that kind should have been so early 



LORD BACON. 19 

formed, even by so powerful and active a mind. But it is cer- 
tain that, after a residence of three years at Cambridge, Bacon 
departed, carrying with him a profound contempt for the course 
of study pursued there, a fixed conviction that the system of 
academic education in England was radically vicious, a just scorn 
for the trifles on which the followers of Aristotle had wasted 
their powers, and no great reverence for Aristotle himself. 

In his sixteentli year he visited Paris, and resided there for 
some time, under the care of Sir Amias Paulet, Elizabeth's 
minister at the French court, and one of the ablest and most 
upright of the many valuable servants whom she employed. 
France was at that time in a deplorable state of agitation. The 
Huguenots and the Catholics were mustering all their force for 
the fiercest and most protracted of their many struggles ; while 
the prince, whose duty it was to protect and to restrain both, 
had by his vices and follies degraded himself so deeply that he 
had no authority over either. Bacon, however, made a tour 
through several provinces, and appears to have passed some 
time at Poitiers. We have abundant proof that during his stay 
on the Continent he did not neglect literary and scientific 
pursuits. But his attention seems to have been chiefly directed 
to statistics and diplomacy. It was at this time that he wrote 
those Notes on the State of Europe which are printed in his 
works. He studied the principles of the art of deciphering with 
great interest, and invented one cipher so ingenious that, many 
years later, he thought it deserving of a place in the De 
Augmentis. In February, 1580, while engaged in these pur- 
suits, he received intelligence of the almost sudden death of his 
father, and instantly returned to England. 

His prospects were greatly overcast by this event. He was 
most desirous to obtain a provision which might enable him to 
devote himself to literature and politics. He applied to the 
Government ; and it seems strange that he should have applied 
in vain. His wishes were moderate. His hereditary claims on 

B 2 



20 LORD BACON. 

the administration were great. He bad himself been favourably 
noticed by tbe Queen. His uncle was Prime Minister. Hia 
own talents were such as any minister might have been eager 
to enlist in the public service. But his solicitations were un- 
successful. The truth is that the Cecils disliked him, and did 
all that they could decently do to keep him down. It has 
never been alleged that Bacon had done anything to merit this 
dislike ; nor is it at all probable that a man whose temper was 
naturally mild, whose manners were courteous, who, through 
life, nursed his fortunes with the utmost care, and who was 
fearful even to a fault of offending the powerful, would have 
given any just cause of displeasure to a kinsman who had the 
means of rendering him essential service and of doing him 
irreparable injury. The real explanation, we believe, is this. 
Robert Cecil, the Treasurer's second son, was younger by a few 
months than Bacon. He had been educated with the utmost 
care, had been initiated, while still a boy, in the mysteries of 
diplomacy and court-intrigue, and was just at this time about 
to be produced on the stage of public life. The wish nearest to 
Burleigh's heart was th%t his own greatness might descend to 
this favourite child. But even Burleigh's fatherly partiality 
could hardly prevent him from perceiving that Robert, with all 
his abilities and acquirements, was no match for his cousin 
Francis. This seems to us the only rational explanation of the 
Treasurer's conduct. Mr. Montagu is more charitable. He 
supposes that Burleigh was influenced merely by affection for 
his nephew, and wa3 " little disposed to encourage him to rely 
on others rather than on himself, and to venture on the quick- 
sands of politics, instead of the certain profession of the law." 
If such were Burleigh's feelings, it seems strange that he should 
have suffered his son to venture on those quicksands from 
which he so carefully preserved his nephew. But the truth is 
that, if Burleigh had been so disposed, he might easily have 
secured to Bacon a comfortable provision which should have 



LORD BACON. 21 

been exposed to no risk. And it is certain that he showed as 
little disposition to enable his nephew to live by a profession as 
to enable him to live without a profession. That Bacon himself 
attributed the conduct of his relatives to jealousy of his superior 
talents, we have not the smallest doubt. In a letter written 
many years later to Villiers, he expresses himself thus ; " Coun- 
tenance, encourage, and advance able men in all kinds, degrees, 
and professions. For in the time of the Cecils, the father and 
the son, able men were by design and of purpose suppressed." 

Whatever Burleigh's motives might be, his purpose was 
unalterable. The supplications which Francis addressed to his 
uncle and aunt were earnest, humble, and almost servile. He 
was the most promising and accomplished young man of his 
time. His father had been the brother-in-law, the most use- 
ful colleague, the nearest friend of the Minister. But all this 
availed poor Francis nothing. He was forced, much against 
his will, to betake himself to the study of the law. He was 
admitted at Gray's Inn ; and, during some years, he laboured 
there in obscurity. 

What the extent of his legal attainments may have been it is 
difficult to say. It was not hard for a man of his powers to 
acquire that very moderate portion of technical knowledge 
which, when joined to quickness, tact, wit, ingenuity, eloquence, 
and knowledge of the world, is sufficient to raise an advocate to 
the highest professional eminence. The general opinion ap- 
pears to have been that which was on one occasion expressed 
by Elizabeth. " Bacon," said she, " hath a great wit and much 
learning ; but in law showeth to the uttermost of his know- 
ledge, and is not deep." The Cecils, we suspect, did their best 
to spread this opinion by whispers and insinuations. Coke 
openly proclaimed it with that rancorous insolence which was 
habitual to him. No reports are more readily believed than 
those which disparage genius, and soothe the envy of conscious 
mediocrity. It must have been inexpressibly consoling to a 



22 LORD BACON. 

stupid sergeant, the forerunner of him who, a hundred and 
fifty years later, " shook his head at Murray as a wit," to know 
that the most profound thinker and the most accomplished 
orator of the age was very imperfectly acquainted with the law 
touching bastard eigne and mulier puisne, and confounded the 
right of free fishery with that of common of piscary. 

It is certain that no man in that age, or indeed during the 
century and a half which followed, was better acquainted than 
Bacon with the philosophy of law. His technical knowledge 
was quite sufficient, with the help of his admirable talents and 
of his insinuating address, to procure clients. He rose very 
rapidly into business, and soon entertained hopes of being called 
within the bar. He applied to Lord Burleigh for that purpose, 
but received a testy refusal. Of the grounds of that refusal we 
can, in some measure, judge by Bacon's answer, which is still 
extant. It seems that the old Lord, whose temper age and gout 
had by no means altered for the better, and who loved to mark 
his dislike of the showy, quickwitted young men of the rising 
generation, took this opportunity to read Francis a very sharp 
lecture on his vanity and want of respect for his betters. 
Francis returned a most submissive reply, thanked the Trea- 
surer for the admonition, and promised to profit by it. Strangers 
meanwhile were less unjust to the young barrister than his 
nearest kinsman had been. In his twenty-sixth year he became 
a bencher of his Inn ; and two years later he was appointed 
Lent reader. At length, in 1590, he obtained for the first time 
some show of favour from the Court. He was sworn in Queen's 
Counsel extraordinary. But this mark of honour was not 
accompanied by any pecuniary emolument. He continued, 
therefore, to solicit his powerful relatives for some provision 
which might enable him to live without drudging at his 
profession. He bore, with a patience and serenity which, we 
fear, bordered on meanness, the morose humours of his uncle, 
and the sneering reflections which his cousin cast on speculative 



LORD BACON. 23 

men, lost in philosophical dreams, and too wise to be capable of 
transacting public business. At length the Cecils were gene 
rous enough to procure for him the reversion of the Registrar 
ship of the Star Chamber. This was a lucrative place ; but, as 
many years elapsed before it fell in, he was still under the ne- 
cessity of labouring for his daily bread. 

In the Parliament which was called in 1593 he sat as member 
for the county of Middlesex, and soon attained eminence as a 
debater. It is easy to perceive from the scanty remains of his 
oratory that the same compactness of expression and richness of 
fancy which appear in his writings characterized his speeches ; 
and that his extensive acquaintance with literature and history 
enabled him to entertain his audience with a vast variety of 
illustrations and allusions which were generally happy and appo- 
site, but which were probably not least pleasing to the taste of 
that age when they were such as would now be thought childish 
or pedantic. It is evident also that he was, as indeed might have 
been expected, perfectly free from those faults which are gene- 
rally found in an advocate who, after having risen to eminence 
at the bar, enters the House of Commons ; that it was his habit 
to deal with every great question, not in small detached portions, 
but as a whole ; that he refined little, and that his reasonings 
were those of a capacious rather than a subtle mind. Ben 
Jonson, a most unexceptionable judge, has described Bacon's 
eloquence in words, which, though often quoted, will bear to be 
quoted again. " There happened in my time one noble speaker 
who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where 
he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man 
ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered 
less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of 
his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could 
not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded 
where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his 
devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The 

B 4 



24 LORD BACON. 

fear of every man that beard him was lest he should make aii 
end.'' From the mention which is made of judges, it would 
seem that Jonson had heard Bacon only at the Bar. Indeed 
we imagine that the House of Commons was then almost inacces- 
sible to strangers. It is not probable that a man of Bacon's 
nice observation would speak in Parliament exactly as he spoke 
in the Court of Queen's Bench. But the graces of manner and 
language must, to a great extent, have been common between 
the Queen's Counsel and the Knight of the Shire. 

Bacon tried to play a very difficult game in politics. He 
wished to be at once a favourite at Court and popular with the 
multitude. If any man could have succeeded in this attempt, a 
man of talents so rare, of judgment so prematurely ripe, of tem- 
per so calm, and of manners so plausible, might have been 
expected to succeed. Nor indeed did he wholly fail. Once, 
however, he indulged in a burst of patriotism which cost him a 
long and bitter remorse, and which he never ventured to repeat 
The Court asked for large subsidies and for speedy payment. 
The remains of Bacon's speech breathe all the spirit of the Long 
Parliament. " The gentlemen," said he, "must sell their plate, 
and the farmers their brass pots ere this will be paid ; and for us, 
we are here to search the wounds of the realm, and not to skim 
them over. The dangers are these. First, we shall breed dis- 
content and endanger her Majesty's safety, which must consist 
more in the love of the people than their wealth. Secondly, 
this being granted in this sort, other princes hereafter will look 
for the like ; so that we shall put an evil precedent on ourselves 
and our posterity ; and in histories, it is to be observed, of all 
nations the English are not to be subject, base, or taxable." 
The Queen and her ministers resented this outbreak of public 
spirit in the highest manner. Indeed, many an honest member 
of the House of Commons had, for a much smaller matter, been 
sent to the Tower by the proud and hot-blooded Tudors. The 
young patriot condescended to make the most abject apologies. 



LORD BACON. 25 

He adjured the Lord Treasurer to show some favour to his poor 
servant and ally. He bemoaned himself to the Lord Keeper, in 
a letter which may keep in countenance the most unmanly of 
the epistles which Cicero wrote during his banishment. The 
lesson was not thrown away. Bacon never offended in the same 
manner again. 

He was now satisfied that he had little to hope from the pa- 
tronage of those powerful kinsmen whom he had solicited during 
twelve years with such meek pertinacity; and he began to look 
towards a different quarter. Among the courtiers of Elizabeth 
had lately appeared a new favourite, young, noble, wealthy, ac- 
complished, eloquent, brave, generous, aspiring ; a favourite who 
had obtained from the grey-headed queen such marks of regard 
as she had scarce vouchsafed to Leicester in the season of the 
passions ; who was at once the ornament of the palace and the 
idol of the city ; who was the common patron of men of letters 
and of men of the sword ; who was the common refuge of the 
persecuted Catholic and of the persecuted Puritan. The calm 
prudence which had enabled Burleigh to shape his course through 
so many dangers, and the vast experience which he had acquired 
in dealing with two generations of colleagues and rivals, seemed 
scarcely sufficient to support him in this new competition ; and 
Robert Cecil sickened with fear and envy as he contemplated 
the rising fame and influence of Essex. 

The history of the factions which, towards the close of the 
reign of Elizabeth, divided her court and her council, though 
pregnant with instruction, is by no means interesting or pleasing. 
Both parties employed the means which are familiar to unscru- 
pulous statesmen ; and neither had, or even pretended to have, 
any important end in view. The public mind was then reposing 
from one great effort, and collecting strength for another. That 
impetuous and appalling rush with which the human intellect 
had moved forward in the career of truth and liberty, during 
the fifty years which followed the separation of Luther from the 



26 LORD BACON. 

communion of the Church of Rome, was now over. The bound- 
ary between Protestantism and Popery had been fixed very 
nearly where it still remains. England, Scotland, the Northern 
kingdoms were on one side ; Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, on 
the other. The line of demarcation ran, as it still runs, through 
the midst of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Switzerland, 
dividing province from province, electorate from electorate, and 
canton from canton. France might be considered as a debatable 
land, in which the contest was still undecided. Since that time 
the two religions have done little more than maintain their 
ground. A few occasional incursions have been made. But 
the general frontier remains the same. During two hundred 
and fifty years no great society has risen up like one man, and 
emancipated itself by one mighty effort from the superstition of 
ages. This spectacle was common in the sixteenth century. 
Why has it ceased to be so ? Why has so violent a movement 
been followed by so long a repose ? The doctrines of the Re- 
formers are not less agreeable to reason or to revelation now than 
formerly. The public mind is assuredly not less enlightened 
now than formerly. Why is it that Protestantism, after carrying 
everything before it in a time of comparatively little knowledge 
and little freedom, should make no perceptible progress in v 
reasoning and tolerant age ; that the Luthers, the Calvins, the 
Knoxes, the Zwingles, should have left no successors ; that 
during two centuries and a half fewer converts should have been 
brought over from the Church of Rome than at the time of the 
Reformation were sometimes gained in a year ? This has always 
appeared to us one of the most curious and interesting problems 
in history. On some future occasion we may perhaps attempt 
to solve it. At present it is enough to say that, at the close of 
Elizabeth's reign, the Protestant party, to borrow the language 
of the Apocalypse, had left its first love and had ceased to do 
its first works. 

The great struggle of the sixteenth century was over. The 



LORD BACON. 27 

great struggle of the seventeenth century had not commenced. 
The confessors of Mary's reign were dead. The members of the 
Long Parliament were still in their cradles. The Papists had 
been deprived of all power in the state. The Puritans had not 
yet attained any formidable extent of power. True it is that a 
student, well acquainted with the history of the next generation, 
can easily discern in the proceedings of the last Parliaments of 
Elizabeth the germ of great and ever memorable events. But 
to the eye of a contemporary nothing of this appeared. The 
two sections of ambitious men who were struggling for power 
differed from each other on no important public question. Both 
belonged to the Established Church. Both professed boundless 
loyalty to the Queen. Both approved the war with Spain. 
There is not, as far as we are aware, any reason to believe that 
they entertained different views concerning the succession to the 
Crown. Certainly neither faction had any great measure of 
reform in view. Neither attempted to redress any public grie- 
vance. The most odious and pernicious grievance under which 
the nation then suffered was a source of profit to both, and was 
defended by both with equal zeal. Raleigh held a monopoly of 
cards, Essex a monopoly of sweet wines. In fact, the only 
ground of quarrel between the parties was that they could not 
agree as to their respective shares of power and patronage. 

Nothing in the political conduct of Essex entitles him to 
esteem ; and the pity with which we regard his early and 
terrible end is diminished by the consideration, that he put to 
hazard the lives and fortunes of his most attached friends, and 
endeavoured to throw the whole country into confusion, for 
objects purely personal. Still, it is impossible not to be deeply 
interested for a man so brave, high-spirited, and generous ; for 
a man who, while he conducted himself towards his sovereign 
with a boldness such as was then found in no other subject, 
conducted himself towards his dependents with a delicacy 
such as has rarely been found in any other patron. Unlike the 



28 LORD BACON. 

vulgar herd of benefactors, he desired to inspire, not gratitude, 
but affection. He tried to make those whom he befriended feel 
towards him as towards an equal. His mind, ardent, sus- 
ceptible, naturally disposed to admiration of all that is great 
and beautiful, was fascinated by the genius and the accomplish- 
ments of Bacon. A close friendship was soon formed between 
them, a friendship destined to have a dark, a mournful, a 
shameful end. 

In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant, and 
Bacon hoped to obtain it. Essex made his friend's cause his 
own, sued, expostulated, promised, threatened, but all in vain. 
It is probable that the dislike felt by the Cecils for Bacon had 
been increased by the connection which he had lately formed 
with the Earl. Robert was then on the point of being made 
Secretary of State. He happened one day to be in the same 
coach with Essex, and a remarkable conversation took place be- 
tween them. " My Lord," said Sir Robert, " the Queen has de- 
termined to appoint an Attorney-General without more delay. 
I pray your Lordship to let me know whom you will favour." 
" I wonder at your question," replied the Earl. " You cannot 
but know that resolutely, against all the world, I stand for 
your cousin, Francis Bacon." " Good Lord !" cried Cecil, unable 
to bridle his temper, " I wonder your Lordship should spend 
your strength on so unlikely a matter. Can you name one pre- 
cedent of so raw a youth promoted to so great a place ? " This 
objection came with a singularly bad grace from a man who, 
though younger than Bacon, was in daily expectation of being- 
made Secretary of State. The blot was too obvious to be missed 
by Essex, who seldom forbore to speak his mind. " I have, 
made no search," said he, " for precedents of young men who 
have filled the office of Attorney-General. But I could name 
to you, Sir Robert, a man younger than Francis, less learned 
and equally inexperienced, who is suing and striving with all 
his might for an office of far greater weight." Sir Robert had 



LORD BACON. 29 

nothing to say but that he thought his own abilities equal to 
the place which he hoped to obtain, and that his father's long 
services deserved such a mark of gratitude from the Queen ; as 
if his abilities were comparable to his cousin's, or as if Sir 
Nicholas Bacon had done no service to the State. Cecil then 
hinted that, if Bacon would be satisfied with the Solicitorship, 
that might be of easier digestion to the Queen. " Digest me 
no digestions," said the generous and ardent Earl. " The At- 
torneyship for Francis is that I must have ; and in that I will 
spend all my power, might, authority, and amity ; and with tooth 
and nail procure the same for him against whomsoever ; and 
whosoever getteth this office out of my hands for any other, 
before he have it, it shall cost him the coming by. And this be 
you assured of, Sir Robert, for now I fully declare myself ; and 
for my own part, Sir Robert, I think strange both of my Lord 
Treasurer and you, that can have the mind to seek the pre- 
ference of a stranger before so near a kinsman ; for if you weigh 
in a balance the parts every way of his competitor and him, 
only excepting five poor years of admitting to a house of court 
before Francis, you shall find in all other respects whatsoever 
no comparison between them." 

When the office of Attorney-General was filled up, the Earl 
pressed the Queen to make Bacon Solicitor- General, and, on 
this occasion, the old Lord Treasurer professed himself not un- 
favourable to his nephew's pretensions. But, after a contest 
which lasted more than a year and a half, and in which Essex, 
to use his own words, " spent all his power, might, authority, 
and amity," the place was given to another. Essex felt this 
disappointment keenly, but found consolation in the most mu- 
nificent and delicate liberality. He presented Bacon with an 
estate worth near two thousand pounds, situated at Twickenham ; 
and this, as Bacon owned many years after, " with so kind and 
noble circumstances as the manner was worth more than the 
matter." 



30 LORD BACON. 

It was soon after these events that Bacon first appeared before 
the public as a writer. Early in 1597 he published a small 
volume of Essays, which was afterwards enlarged by successive 
additions to many times its original bulk. This little work was, 
as it well deserved to be, exceedingly popular. It was reprinted 
in a few months; it was 1 translated into Latin, French, and 
Italian ; and it seems to have at once established the literary 
reputation of its author. But, though Bacon's reputation rose, 
his fortunes were still depressed. He was in great pecuniary 
difficulties ; and, on one occasion, was arrested in the street 
at the suit of a goldsmith for a debt of three hundred pounds, 
and was carried to a spunging-house in Coleman Street. 

The kindness of Essex was in the mean time indefatigable. 
In 1596 he sailed on his memorable expedition to the coast 
of Spain. At the very moment of his embarkation, he wrote to 
several of his friends, commending to them, during his own 
absence, the interests of Bacon. He returned, after performing 
the most brilliant military exploit that was achieved on the 
Continent by English arms during the long interval which 
elapsed between the battle of Agincuurt and that of Blenheim. 
His valour, his talents, his humane and generous disposition, 
had made him the idol of his countrymen and had extorted 
praise from the enemies whom he had conquered.* He had 
always been proud and headstrong; and his splendid success 
seems to have rendered his faults more offensive than ever. 
But to his friend Francis he was still the same. Bacon had 
some thoughts of making his fortune by marriage, and had 
begun to pay court to a widow of the name of Hatton. The 
eccentric manners and violent temper of this woman made her 
a disgrace and a torment to her connections. But Bacon was 
not aware of her faults, or was disposed to overlook them for 
the sake of her ample fortune. Essex pleaded his friend's 

* See Cervantes's Novela de la Espanola Inglesa. 



LORD BACON. 31 

cause with his usual ardour. The letters which the Earl 
addressed to Lady Hatton and to her mother are still extant, 
and are highly honourable to him. " If," he wrote, " she were 
my sister or my daughter, I protest I would as confidently 
resolve to further it as I now persuade you : " and again, " If 
my faith be any thing, I protest, if I had one as near me as she 
is to you, I had rather match her with him, than with men of 
far greater titles." The suit, happily for Bacon, was unsuc- 
cessful. The lady indeed was kind to him in more ways than 
one. She rejected him ; and she accepted his enemy. She 
married that narrow-minded, bad-hearted pedant, Sir Edward 
Coke, and did her best to make him as miserable as he deserved 
to be. 

The fortunes of Essex had now reached their height and 
began to decline. He possessed indeed all the qualities which 
raise men to greatness rapidly. But he had neither the virtues 
nor the vices which enable men to retain greatness long. His 
frankness, his keen sensibility to insult and injustice, were by no 
means agreeable to a sovereign naturally impatient of opposition, 
and accustomed, during forty years, to the most extravagant 
flattery, and the most abject submission. The daring and con- 
temptuous manner in which he bade defiance to his enemies 
excited their deadly hatred. His administration in Ireland was 
unfortunate, and in many respects highly blamable. Though 
his brilliant courage and his impetuous activity fitted him ad- 
mirably for such enterprises as that of Cadiz, he did not possess 
the caution, patience, and resolution necessary for the conduct 
of a protracted war, in which difficulties were to be gradually 
surmounted, in which much discomfort was to be endured, and 
in which few splendid exploits could be achieved. For the 
civil duties of his high place he was still less qualified. Though 
eloquent and accomplished, he was in no sense a statesman. 
The multitude indeed still continued to regard even his faults 
with fondness. But the Court had ceased to give him credit, 



32 LORD BACON. 

even for the merit which he really possessed. The person on 
whom, during the decline of his influence, he chiefly depended, 
to whom he confided his perplexities, whose advice he solicited, 
whose intercession he employed, was his friend Bacon. The 
lamentable truth must be told. This friend, so loved, so trusted, 
bore a principal part in ruining the Earl's fortunes, in shedding 
his blood, and in blackening his memory. 

But let us be just to Bacon. We believe that, to the last, ho 
had no wish to injure Essex. Nay, we believe that he sin- 
cerely exerted himself to serve Essex, as long as he thought that 
he could serve Essex without injuring himself. The advice 
which he gave to his noble benefactor was generally most 
judicious. He did all in his power to dissuade the Earl from 
accepting the Government of Ireland. " For," says he, " I did 
as plainly see his overthrow chained as it were by destiny to 
that journey, as it is possible for a man to ground a judgment 
upon future contingents." The prediction was accomplished. 
Essex returned in disgrace. Bacon attempted to mediate be- 
tween his friend and the Queen ; and, we believe, honestly em- 
ployed all his address for that purpose. But the task which he 
had undertaken was too difficult, delicate, and perilous, even for 
so wary and dexterous an agent. He had to manage two spirits 
equally proud, resentful, and ungovernable. At Essex House, 
he had to calm the rage of a young hero incensed by multiplied 
wrongs and humiliations, and then to pass to Whitehall for the 
purpose of soothing the peevishness of a sovereign, whose 
temper, never very gentle, had been rendered morbidly irritable 
by age, by declining health, and by the long habit of listening 
to flattery and exacting implicit obedience. It is hard to serve 
two masters. Situated as Bacon was, it was scarcely possible 
for him to shape his course so as not to give one or both of his 
employers reason to complain. For a time he acted as fairly as, 
in circumstances so embarrassing, could reasonably be expected. 
At length he found that, while he was trying to prop the 



LORD BACON. 33 

fortunes of another, lie was in danger of shaking his own. He 
had disobliged both the parties whom he wished to reconcile. 
Essex thought him wanting in zeal as a friend : Elizabeth 
thought him wanting in duty as a subject. The Earl looked on 
him as a spy of the Queen ; the Queen as a creature of the Earl 
The reconciliation which he had laboured to effect appeared 
utterly hopeless. A thousand signs, legible to eyes far less keen 
than his, announced that the fall of his patron was at hand. He 
shaped his course accordingly. When Essex was brought 
before the council to answer for his conduct in Ireland, Bacon, 
after a faint attempt to excuse himself from taking part against 
his friend, submitted himself to the Queen's pleasure, and 
appeared at the bar in support of the charges. But a darker 
scene was behind. The unhappy young nobleman, made reck- 
less by despair, ventured on a rash and criminal enterprise, 
which rendered him liable to the highest penalties of the law. 
What course was Bacon to take ? This was one of those con- 
junctures which show what men are. To a high-minded man, 
wealth, power, court-favour, even personal safety, would have 
appeared of no account, when opposed to friendship, gratitude, 
and honour. Such a man would have stood by the side of Essex 
at the trial, would have " spent all his power, might, authority, 
and amity," in soliciting a mitigation of the sentence, would' 
have been a daily visitor at the cell, would have received the last 
injunctions and the last embrace on the scaffold, would have 
employed all the powers of his intellect to guard from insult the 
fame of his generous though erring friend. An ordinary man 
would neither have incurred the danger of succouring Essex, 
nor the disgrace of assailing him. Bacon did not even preserve 
neutrality. He appeared as counsel for the prosecution. In 
that situation, he did not confine himself to what would have been 
amply sufficient to procure a verdict. He employed all his wit, 
his rhetoric, and his learning, not to insure a conviction, — for 
the circumstances were such that a conviction was inevitable, — 
c 



34 LORD BACON. 

but to deprive the unhappy prisoner of all those excuses which, 
though legally of no value, yet tended to diminish the moral 
guilt of the crime, and which, therefore, though they could not 
justify the peers in pronouncing an acquital, might incline the 
Queen to grant a pardon. The Earl urged as a palliation of his 
frantic acts that he was surrounded by powerful and inveterate 
enemies, that they had ruined his fortunes, that they sought 
his life, and that their persecutions had driven him to despair. 
This was true ; and Bacon well knew it to be true. But he 
affected to treat it as an idle pretence. He compared Essex to 
Pisistratus who, by pretending, to be in imminent danger of 
assassination, and by exhibiting self-inflicted wounds, succeeded 
in establishing tyranny at Athens. This was too much for the 
prisoner to bear. He interrupted his ungrateful friend by 
calling on him to quit the part of an advocate, to come forward 
as a witness, and to tell the lords whether, in old times, he, 
Francis Bacon, had not, under his own hand, repeatedly asserted 
the truth of what he now represented as idle pretexts. It is 
painful to go on with this lamentable story. Bacon returned a 
shuffling answer to the Earl's question, and, as if the allusion to 
Pisistratus were not sufficiently offensive, made another allusion 
still more unjustifiable. He compared Essex to Henry Duke of 
Guise, and the rash attempt in the city to the day of the barri- 
cades at Paris. Why Bacon had recourse to such a topic it is 
difficult to say. It was quite unnecessary for the purpose of ob- 
taining a verdict. It was certain to produce a strong impression 
on the mind of the haughty and jealous princess on whose 
pleasure the Earl's fate depended. The faintest allusion to the 
degrading tutelage in which the last Valois had been held by the 
House of Lorraine was sufficient to harden her heart against a 
man who in rank, in military reputation, in popularity among 
the citizens of the capital, bore some resemblance to the Captain 
of the League. 

Essex was convicted. Bacon made no effort to save him, 
though the Queen's feelings were such that he might have 



LORD BACON. 35 

pleaded his benefactor's cause, possibly with success, certainly 
without any serious danger to himself. The unhappy nobleman 
was executed. His fate excited strong, perhaps unreasonable 
feelings of compassion and indignation. The Queen was re- 
ceived by the citizens of London with gloomy looks and faint 
acclamations. She thought it expedient to publish a vindication 
of her late proceedings. The faithless friend who had assisted 
in taking the Earl's life was now employed to murder the Earl's 
fame. The Queen had seen some of Bacon's writings and had 
been pleased with them. He was accordingly selected to write 
" A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and 
committed by Robert Earl of Essex," which was printed by 
authority. In the succeeding reign, Bacon had not a word to 
say in defence of this performance, a performance abounding in 
expressions which no generous enemy would have employed 
respecting a man who had so dearly expiated his offences. His 
only excuse was, that he wrote it by command, that he con- 
sidered himself as a mere secretary, that he had particular 
instructions as to the way in which he was to treat every part 
of the subject, and that, in fact, he had furnished only the ar- 
rangement and the style. 

We regret to say that the whole conduct of Bacon through 
the course of these transactions appears to Mr. Montagu not 
merely excusable, but deserving of high admiration. The in- 
tegrity and benevolence of this gentleman are so well known 
that our readers will probably be at a loss to conceive by what 
steps he can have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion : and 
we are half afraid that they will suspect us of practising some 
artifice upon them when we report the principal arguments 
which he employs. 

In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu 
attempts to show that Bacon lay under greater obligations to 
the Queen than to Essex. "What these obligations were it is not 
easy to discover. The situation of Queen's Counsel, and a re- 



36 LORD BACON. 

mote reversion, were surely favours very far below Bacon's per- 
sonal and heriditary claims. They were favours which had not 
cost the Queen a groat, nor had they put a groat into Bacon's 
purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's claims to gratitude 
on some other ground ; and this Mr. Montagu felt. " What perhaps 
was her greatest kindness," says he, " instead of having hastily 
advanced Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, 
made him bear the yoke in his youth. Such were his obliga- 
tions to Elizabeth." Such indeed they were. Being the son of 
one of her oldest and most faithful ministers, being himself the 
ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had 
been condemned by her to drudgery, to obscurity, to poverty. 
She had depreciated his acquirements. She had checked him 
in the most imperious manner, when in Parliament he ventured 
to act an independent part. She had refused to him the pro- 
fessional advancement to which he had a just claim. To her it 
was owing that, while younger men, not superior to him in ex- 
traction, and far inferior to him in every kind of personal merit, 
were filling the highest offices of the state, adding manor to 
manor, rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a spunging- 
house for a debt of three hundred pounds. Assuredly if Bacon 
owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed none to Essex. If the 
Queen really was his best friend, the Earl was his worst enemy. 
We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a 
little further. He might have maintained that Bacon was excus- 
able in revenging himself on a man who had attempted to rescue 
his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by the Queen, 
who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with 
attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had 
been so cruel as to present him with a landed estate. 

Again, we can hardly think Mr. Montagu serious when he 
tells us that Bacon was bound for the sake of the public not to 
destroy his own hopes of advancement, and that he took part 
against Essex from a wish to obtain power which might enable 
him to be useful to his country. We really do not know how 



LORD BACON. 37 

to refute such arguments except by stating them. Nothing is 
impossible which does not involve a contradiction. It is barely 
possible that Bacon's motives for acting as he did on this 
occasion may have been gratitude to the Queen for keeping him 
poor, and a desire to benefit his fellow-creatures in some high 
situation. And there is a possibility that Bonner may have 
been a good Protestant who, being convinced that the blood of 
martyrs is the seed of the church, heroically went through all 
the drudgery and infamy of persecution, in order that he might 
inspire the English people with an intense and lasting hatred 
of Popery. There is a possibility that Jeffreys may have been 
ardent lover of liberty, and that he may have beheaded 
Algernon Sydney, and burned Elizabeth Gaunt, only in order 
to produce a reaction which might lead to the limitation of the 
prerogative. There is a possibility that Thurtell may have 
killed Weare only in order to give the youth of England an 
impressive warning against gaming and bad company. There 
is a possibility that Fauntleroy may have forged powers of 
attorney, only in order that his fate might turn the attention of 
the public to the defects of the penal law. These things, we 
say, are possible. But they are so extravagantly improbable 
that a man who should act on such suppositions would be fit 
only for St. Luke's. And we do not see why suppositions 
on which no rational man would act in ordinary life should be 
admitted into history. 

Mr. Montagu's notion that Bacon desired power only in 
order to do good to mankind appears somewhat strange to us, 
when we consider how Bacon afterwards used power, and how 
he lost it. Surely the service which he rendered to mankind 
by taking Lady Wharton's broad pieces and Sir John Kennedy's 
cabinet was not of such vast importance as to sanctify all the 
means which might conduce to that end. If the case were 
fairly stated, it would, we much fear, stand thus : Bacon was a 
servile advocate, that he might be a corrupt judge. 



38 LORD BACON. 

Mr. Montagu maintains that none but the ignorant and 
unreflecting can think Bacon censurable for any thing that he 
did as counsel for the Crown, and that no advocate can 
justifiably use any discretion as to the party for whom he 
appears. We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine 
which is held on this subject by English lawyers be or be not 
agreeable to reason and morality ; whether it be right that a 
man should, with a wig on his head, and a band round his neck, 
do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would 
think it wicked and infamous to do for an empire ; whether it 
be right that, not merely believing but knowing a statement to 
be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by 
rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, 
by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest 
witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that 
statement false. It is not necessary on the present occasion to 
decide these questions. The professional rules, be they good 
or bad, are rules to which many wise and virtuous men have 
conformed, and are daily conforming. If, therefore, Bacon did 
no more than these rules required of him, we shall readily 
admit that he was blameless, or, at least, excusable. But we 
conceive that his conduct was not justifiable according to any 
professional rules that now exist, or that ever existed in 
England. It has always been held that, in criminal cases in 
which the prisoner was denied the help of counsel, and, above 
all, in capital cases, advocates were both entitled and bound to 
exercise a discretion. It is true, that, after the Revolution, 
when the Parliament began to make inquisition for the innocent 
blood which had been shed by the last Stuarts, a feeble attempt 
was made to defend the lawyers who had been accomplices in 
the murder of Sir Thomas Armstrong, on the ground that they 
had only acted professionally. The wretched sophism was 
silenced by the execrations of the House of Commons. "Things 
will never be well done," said Mr. Foley, " till some of that 



LORD BACON. 39 

profession be made examples." " We have a new sort of mon- 
sters in the world," said the younger Hampden, "haranguing a 
man to death. These I call bloodhounds. Sawyer is very 
criminal and guilty of this murder." " I speak to discharge my 
conscience," said Mr. Garroway. " I will not have the blood 
of this man at my door. Sawyer demanded judgment against 
him and execution. I believe him guilty of the death of this 
man. Do what you will with him." "If the profession of the 
law," said the elder Hampden, "gives a man authority to 
murder at this rate, it is the interest of all men to rise and ex- 
terminate that profession." Nor was this language held only 
by unlearned country gentlemen. Sir William Williams, one 
of the ablest and most unscrupulous lawyers of the age, took 
the same view of the case. He had not hesitated, he said, to 
take part in the prosecution of the Bishops, because they were 
allowed counsel. But he maintained that, where the prisoner 
was not allowed counsel, the Counsel for the Crown was bound 
to exercise a discretion, and that every lawyer who neglected 
this distinction was a betrayer of the law. But it is unnecessary 
to cite authority. It is known to every body who has ever 
looked into a court of quarter-sessions that lawyers do exercise 
a discretion in criminal cases ; and it is plain to every man of 
common sense that, if they did not exercise such a discretion, 
they would be a more hateful body of men than those bravoes 
who used to hire out their stilettoes in Italy. 

Bacon appeared against a man who was indeed guilty of a 
great offence, but who had been his benefactor and friend. He 
did more than this. Nay, he did more than a person who had 
never seen Essex would have been justified in doing. He 
employed all the art of an advocate in order to make the 
prisoner's conduct appear more inexcusable and more dangerous 
to the state than it really had been. All that professional duty 
could, in any case, have required of him would have been to 
conduct the cause so as to insure a conviction. But from the 
c 4 



40 LORD BACON. 

nature of the circumstances there could not be the smallest 
doubt that the Earl would be found guilty. The character of 
the crime was unequivocal. It had been committed recently, 
in broad daylight, in the streets of the capital, in the presence 
of thousands. If ever there was an occasion on which an 
advocate had no temptation to resort to extraneous topics, for 
the purpose of blinding the judgment and inflaming the passions 
of a tribunal, this was that occasion. Why then resort to 
arguments which, while they could add nothing to the strength 
of the case, considered in a legal point of view, tended to aggra- 
vate the moral guilt of the fatal enterprise, and to excite fear 
and resentment in that quarter from which alone the Earl could 
now expect mercy ? Why remind the audience of the arts of 
the ancient tyrants ? Why deny, what every body knew to be 
the truth, that a powerful faction at court had long sought to 
effect the ruin of the prisoner ? Why, above all, institute a 
parallel between the unhappy culprit and the most wicked and 
most successful rebel of the age ? Was it absolutely impossible 
to do all that professional duty required without reminding a 
jealous sovereign of the League, of the barricades, and of all 
the humiliations which a too powerful subject had heaped on 
Henry the Third ? 

But if we admit the plea which Mr. Montagu urges in defence 
of what Bacon did as an advocate, what shall we say of the 
" Declaration of the Treasons of Robert Earl of Essex ? " Here 
at least there was no pretence of professional obligation. Even 
those who may think it the duty of a lawyer to hang, draw, and 
quarter his benefactors, for a proper consideration, will hardly 
say that it is his duty to write abusive pamphlets against them, 
after they are in their graves. Bacon excused himself by 
saying that he was not answerable for the matter of the book, 
and that he furnished only the language. But why did he 
endow such purposes with words ? Could no hack writer, 
without virtue or shame, be found to exaggerate the errors, 



LORD BACON. 41 

already so dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit ? Every 
age produces those links between the man and the baboon. 
Every age is fertile of Oldmixons, of Kenricks, and of Antony 
Pasquins. But was it for Bacon so to prostitute his intellect ? 
Could he not feel that, while he rounded and pointed some 
period dictated by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form 
to some slander invented by the dastardly malignity of Cobham, 
he was not sinning merely against his friend's honour and his 
own ? Could he not feel that letters, eloquence, philosophy, 
were all degraded in his degradation ? 

The real explanation of all this is perfectly obvious ; and 
nothing but a partiality amounting to a ruling passion could 
cause any body to miss it. The moral qualities of Bacon were 
not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. 
He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness 
his high civil honours, and the far higher honours gained by 
his intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into 
treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man 
more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten 
the right. No man was more expert at the soft answer which 
turneth away wrath. He was never charged, by any accuser 
entitled to the smallest credit, with licentious habits. His even 
temper, his flowing courtesy, the general respectability of his 
demeanour, made a favourable impression on those who saw 
him in situations which do not severely try the principles. His 
faults were — we write it with pain — coldness of heart, and 
meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of feeling 
strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great sacri- 
fices. His desires were set on things below. Wealth, prece- 
dence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large 
houses, fair gardens, rich manors, massy services of plate, gay 
hangings, curious cabinets, had as great attractions for him as 
for any of the courtiers who dropped on their knees in the dirt 
when Elizabeth passed by, and then hastened home to write to 



42 LORD BACON. 

the King of Scots that her Grace seemed to be breaking fast. 
For these objects he had stooped to every thing, and endured 
every thing. For these he had sued in the humblest manner, 
and, when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, had thanked 
those who had repulsed him, and had begun to sue again. For 
these objects, as soon as he found that the smallest show of 
independence in Parliament was offensive to the Queen, he had 
abased himself to the dust before her, and implored forgivenese 
in terms better suited to a convicted thief than to a knight of 
the shire. For these he joined, and for these he forsook, Lord 
Essex. He continued to plead his patron's cause with the 
Queen as long as he thought that by pleading that cause he 
might serve himself. Nay, he went further ; for his feelings, 
though not warm, were kind ; he pleaded that cause as long as 
he thought that he could plead it without injury to himself. 
But when it became evident that Essex was going headlong to 
his ruin, Bacon began to tremble for his own fortunes. What 
he had to fear would not indeed have been very alarming to a 
man of lofty character. It was not death. It was not im- 
prisonment. It was the loss of court favour. It was the being 
left behind by others in the career of ambition. It was the 
having leisure to finish the Instauratio Magna. The Queen 
looked coldly on him. The courtiers began to consider him as 
a marked man. He determined to change his line of conduct, 
and to proceed in a new course with so much vigour as to make 
up for lost time. When once he had determined to act against 
his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted with more 
zeal than would have been necessary or justifiable if he had 
been employed against a stranger. He exerted his professional 
talents to shed the Earl's blood, and his literary talents to 
blacken the Earl's memory. 

It is certain that his conduct excited at the time great and 
general disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this 
disapprobation, though deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. 



LOUD BACON. 43 

But a great change was at hand. The health of the Queen had 
long been decaying ; and the operation of age and disease was 
now assisted by acute mental suffering. The pitiable melan- 
choly of her last days has generally been ascribed to her fond 
regret for Essex. But we are disposed to attribute her dejec- 
tion partly to physical causes, and partly to the conduct of her 
courtiers and ministers. They did all in their power to conceal 
from her the intrigues which they were carrying on at the 
Court of Scotland. But her keen sagacity was not to be so 
deceived. She did not know the whole. But she knew that 
she was surrounded by men who were impatient for that new 
world which was to begin at her death, who had never been 
attached to her by affection, and who were now but very 
slightly attached to her by interest. Prostration and flattery 
could not conceal from her the cruel truth, that those whom 
she had trusted and promoted had never loved her, and were 
fast ceasing to fear her. Unable to avenge herself, and too 
proud too complain, she suffered sorrow and resentment to prey 
on her heart, till, after a long career of power, prosperity, and 
glory, she died sick and weary of the world. 

James mounted the throne : and Bacon employed all his 
address to obtain for himself a share of the favour of his new 
master. This was no difficult task. The faults of James, both 
as a man and as a prince, were numerous ; but insensibility to 
the claims of genius and learning was not among them. He 
was indeed made up of two men, a witty, well-read scholar, who 
wrote, disputed, and harangued, and a nervous,' drivelling idiot, 
who acted. If he had been a Canon of Christ Church, or a 
Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would 
have left a highly respectable name to posterity ; that he would 
have distinguished himself among the translators of the Bible, 
and among the Divines who attended the Synod of Dort ; and 
that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no 
contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon. But fortune 



44 LORD BACON. 

placed him in a situation in which his weaknesses covered him 
with disgrace, and in which his accomplishments brought him 
no honour. In a college, much eccentricity and childishness 
would Lave been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all 
that learning could do for him on the throne was to make people 
think him a pedant as well as a fool. 

Bacon was favourably received at Court ; and soon found 
that his chance of promotion was not diminished by the death 
of the Queen. He was solicitous to be knighted, for two reasons 
which are somewhat amusing. The King had already dubbed 
half London, and Bacon found himself the only untitled person 
in his mess at Gray's Inn. This was not very agreeable to him. 
He had also, to quote his own words, " found an Alderman's 
daughter, a handsome maiden, to his liking." On both these 
grounds, he begged his cousin Robert Cecil, " if it might please 
his good Lordship," to use his interest in his behalf. The ap- 
plication was successful. Bacon was one of three hundred 
gentlemen who, on the coronation-day, received the honour, if 
it is to be so called, of knighthood. The handsome maiden, a 
daughter of Alderman Barnham, soon after consented to become 
Sir Francis's lady. 

The death of Elizabeth, though on the whole it improved 
Bacon's prospects, was in one respect an unfortunate event for 
him. The new King had always felt kindly towards Lord 
Essex, and as soon as he came to the throne, began to show 
favour to the House of Devereux, and to those who had stood 
by that house in its adversity. Every body was now at liberty 
to speak out respecting those lamentable events in which Bacon 
had borne so large a share. Elizabeth was scarcely cold when 
the public feeling began to manifest itself by marks of respect 
towards Lord Southampton. That accomplished nobleman, who 
will be remembered to the latest ages as the generous and dis- 
cerning patron of Shakspeare, was held in honour by his con- 
temporaries chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he 



LORD BACOtf. 45 

had borne to Essex. He had been tried and convicted together 
with his friend ; but the Queen had spared his life, and, at the 
time of her death, he was still a prisoner. A crowd of visitors 
hastened to the Tower to congratulate him on his approaching 
deliverance. With that crowd Bacon could not venture to 
mingle. The multitude loudly condemned him ; and his con- 
science told him that the multitude had but too much reason. 
He excused himself to Southampton by letter, in terms which, 
if he had, as Mr. Montagu conceives, done only what as a sub- 
ject and an advocate he was bound to do, must be considered as 
shamefully servile. He owns his fear that his attendance would 
give offence, and that his professions of regard would obtain no 
credit. " Yet," says he, " it is as true as a thing that God 
knoweth, that this great change hath wrought in me no other 
change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be 
that to you now, which I was truly before." 

How Southampton received these apologies we are not in- 
formed. But it is certain that the general opinion was pro- 
nounced against Bacon in a manner not to be misunderstood. 
Soon after his marriage he put forth a defence of his conduct, in 
the form of a Letter to the Earl of Devon. This tract seems to 
us to prove only the exceeding badness of a cause for which 
such talents could do so little. 

It is not probable that Bacon's Defence had much effect on 
his contemporaries. But the unfavourable impression which his 
conduct had made appears to have been gradually effaced. In- 
deed it must be some very peculiar cause that can make a man 
like him long unpopular. His talents secured him from con- 
tempt, his temper and his manners from hatred. There is 
scarcely any story so black that it may not be got over by a 
man of great abilities, whose abilities are united with caution, 
good-humour, patience, and affability, who pays daily sacrifice 
to Nemesis, who is a delightful companion, a serviceable though 
not an ardent friend, and a dangerous yet a placable enemy. 



46 LORD BACON. 

Waller ia the next generation was an eminent instance of this. 
Indeed Waller had much more than may at first sight appear in 
common with Bacon. To the higher intellectual qualities of the 
great English philosopher, to the genius which has made an 
immortal epoch in the history of science, Waller had indeed no 
pretensions. But the mind of Waller, as far as it extended, 
coincided with that of Bacon, and might, so to speak, have been 
cut out of that of Bacon. In the qualities which make a man 
an object of interest and veneration to posterity, they cannot be 
compared together. But in the qualities by which chiefly a 
man is known to his contemporaries there was a striking simi- 
larity between them. Considered as men of the world, as 
courtiers, as politicians, as associates, as allies, as enemies, they 
had nearly the same merits and the same defects. They were 
not malignant. They were not tyrannical. But they wanted 
warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment. There were 
many things which they loved better than virtue, and which 
they feared more than guilt. Yet, even after they had stooped 
to acts of which it is impossible to read the account in the most 
partial narratives without strong disapprobation and contempt,, 
the public still continued to regard them with a feeling not 
easily to be distinguished from esteem. The hyperbole of Juliet 
seemed to be verified with respect to them. " Upon their brows 
shame was ashamed to sit." Every body seemed as desirous to 
throw a veil over their misconduct as if it had been his own. 
Clarendon, who felt, and who had reason to feel, strong personal 
dislike towards Waller, speaks of him thus : " There needs no 
more to be said to extol the excellence and power of his wit 
and pleasantness of his conversation, than it was of magnitude 
enough to cover a world of very great faults, that is, so to cover 
them that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz. a 
narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree, an abjectness 
and want of courage to support him in any virtuous under- 
taking, an insinuation and servile flattery to the height the 



LORD BACON. 47 

vainest and most imperious nature could be contented with. 
.... It had power to reconcile him to those whom he had most' 
offended and provoked, and continued to his age with that rare 
felicity, that his company was acceptable Avhere his spirit was 
odious, and he was at least pitied where he was most detested." 
Much of this, with some softening, might, we fear, be applied 
to Bacon. The influence of Waller's talents, manners, and ac- 
complishments died with him ; and the world has pronounced 
an unbiassed sentence on his character. A few flowing lines are 
not bribe sufficient to pervert the judgment of posterity. But 
the influence of Bacon is felt and will long be felt over the 
whole civilised world. Leniently as he was treated by his con- 
temporaries, posterity has treated him more leniently still. 
Turn where we may, the trophies of that mighty intellect are 
full in view. We are judging Manlius in sight of the Capitol. 

Under the reign of James, Bacon grew rapidly in fortune and 
favour. In 1604 he was appointed King's Counsel, with a fee 
of forty pounds a year ; and a pension of sixty pounds a year 
was settled upon him. In 1607 he became Solicitor-General, 
in 1612 Attorney-General. He continued to distinguish himsell 
in Parliament, particularly by his exertions in favour of one 
excellent measure on which the King's heart was set, the union 
of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an intel- 
lect to discover many irresistible arguments in favour of such a 
scheme. He conducted the great case of the Post Nati in the 
Exchequer Chamber ; and the decision of the judges, a decision 
the legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect 
of which must be acknowledged, was in a great measure attri- 
buted to his dexterous management. While actively engaged 
in the House of Commons and in the courts of law, he still 
found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble treatise on 
the "Advancement of Learning," which at a later period was 
expanded into the De Augmentis, appeared in 1605. The 
' Wisdom of the Ancients," a work which, if it had proceeded 



48 LORD BACON. 

from any other writer, would have been considered as a master- 
piece of wit and learning, but which adds little to the fame of 
Bacon, was printed in 1609. In the mean time the Novum 
Organum was slowly proceeding. Several distinguished men 
of learning had been permitted to see sketches or detached por- 
tions of that extraordinary book ; and, though they were not gene- 
rally disposed to admit the soundness of the author's views, they 
spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius. Sir Thomas 
Bodley, the founder of one of the most magnificent of English 
libraries, was among those stubborn Conservatives who consi- 
dered the hopes with which Bacon looked forward to the future 
destinies of the human race as utterly chimerical, and who re- 
garded with distrust and aversion the" innovating spirit of the 
new schismatics in philosophy. Yet even Bodley, after perusing 
the Cogitata et Visa, one of the most precious of those scattered 
leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterwards 
made up, acknowledged that in " those very points, and in all 
proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master- 
workman;" and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the trea- 
tise over did abound with choice conceits of the present state of 
learning, and with worthy contemplations of the means to pro- 
cure it." In 1612a new edition of the " Essays" appeared, with 
additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and 
quality. Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from 
a work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful 
that even his mighty powers could have achieved, " the reducing 
and recompiling," to use his own phrase, " of the laws of Eng- 
land." 

Unhappily he was at that very time employed in perverting 
those laws to the vilest purposes of tyranny. When Oliver St. 
John was brought before the Star Chamber for maintaining that 
the King had no right to levy Benevolences, and was for his 
manly and constitutional conduct sentenced to imprisonment 
during the royal pleasure and to a fine of 5000/., Bacon appeared 



LORD BACON. 49 

as counsel for the prosecution. About the same time he was 
deeply engaged in a still more disgraceful transaction. An aged 
clergyman, of the name of Peacham, was accused of treason on 
account of some passages of a sermon which was found in his 
study. The sermon, whether written by him or not, had never 
been preached. It did not appear that he had any intention of 
preaching it. The most servile lawyers of those servile times 
were forced to admit that there were great difficulties both as 
to the facts and as to the law. Bacon was employed to remove 
those difficulties. He was employed to settle the question of 
law by tampering with the judges, and the question of fact by 
torturing the prisoner. 

Three judges of the Court of King's Bench were tractable. 
But Coke was made of different stuff. Pedant, bigot, and brute 
as he was, he had qualities which bore a strong, though a very 
disagreeable resemblance to some of the highest virtues which a 
public man can possess. He was an exception to a maxim 
which we believe to be generally true, that those who trample on 
the helpless are disposed to cringe to the powerful. He behaved 
with gross rudeness to his juniors at the bar, and with execrable 
cruelty to prisoners on trial for their lives. But he stood up 
manfully against the King and the King's favourites. No man 
of that age appeared to so little advantage when he was opposed 
to an inferior, and was in the wrong. But, on the other hand, 
it is but fair to admit that no man of that age made so creditable 
a figure when he was opposed to a superior, and happened to be 
in the right. On such occasions, his half-suppressed insolence 
and his impracticable obstinacy had a respectable and interesting 
appearance, when compared with the abject servility of the bar 
and of the bench. On the present occasion he was stubborn 
and surly. He declared that it was a new and highly improper 
practice in the judges to confer with a law-officer of the Crown 
about capital cases which they were afterwards to try ; and for 
some time he resolutely kept aloof. But Bacon was equally 

D 



50 LORD BACON. 

artful and persevering. " I am not wholly out of hope," said he 
in a letter to the King, " that my Lord Coke himself, when I 
have in some dark manner put him in doubt that he shall be 
left alone, will not be singular." After some time Bacon's dex- 
terity was successful ; and Coke, sullenly and reluctantly, fol- 
lowed the example of his brethren. But in order to convict 
Peacham it was necessary to find facts as well as law. Accord- 
ingly, this wretched old man was put to the rack, and, while 
undergoing the horrible infliction, was examined by Bacon, but 
in vain. No confession could be wrung out of him ; and Bacon 
wrote to the King, complaining that Peacham had a dumb devil. 
At length the trial came on. A conviction was obtained ; but 
the charges were so obviously futile, that the government could 
not, for very shame, carry the sentence into execution ; and 
Peacham was suffered to languish away the short remainder of 
his life in a prison. 

All this frightful story Mr. Montagu relates fairly. He nei- 
ther conceals nor distorts any material fact. But he can see 
nothing deserving of condemnation in Bacon's conduct. He 
tells us most truly that we ought not to try the men of one age 
by the standard of another ; that Sir Matthew Hale is not to be 
pronounced a bad man because he left a woman to be executed 
for witchcraft ; that posterity will not be justified in censuring 
judges of our time, for selling offices in their courts, according 
to the established practice, bad as that practice was ; and that 
Bacon is entitled to similar indulgence. " To persecute the 
lover of truth," says Mr. Montagu, " for opposing established 
customs, and to censure him in after ages for not having been 
more strenuous in opposition, are errors which will never cease 
until the pleasure of self-elevation from the depression of supe- 
riority is no more." 

We have no dispute with Mr. Montagu about the general pro- 
position. We assent to every word of it. But does it apply to 
the present case ? - Is it true that in the time of James the First 



LORD BACON. 51 

it was the established practice for the law-officers of the Crown, 
to hold private consultations with the judges, touching capital 
cases which those judges were afterwards to try ? Certainly not. 
In the very page in which Mr. Montagu asserts that "the 
influencing a judge out of court seems at that period scarcely 
to have been considered as improper," he gives the very words 
of Sir Edward Coke on the subject. " I will not thus declare 
what may be my judgment by these auricular confessions of 
new and pernicious tendency, and not according to the customs 
of the realm." Is it possible to imagine that Coke, who had 
himself been Attorney-General during thirteen years, who had 
conducted a far greater number of important state-prosecutions 
than any other lawyer named in English history, and who had 
passed with scarcely any interval from the Attorney-Generalship 
to the first seat in the first criminal court in the realm, could 
have been startled at an invitation to confer with the Crown- 
lawyers, and could have pronounced the practice new, if it had 
really been an established usage ? We well know that where 
property only was at stake, it was then a common though a 
most culpable practice, in the judges, to listen to private solici- 
tation. But the practice of tampering with judges in order to 
procure capital convictions we believe to have been new, first, 
because Coke, who understood those matters better than any 
man of his time, asserted it to be new ; and secondly, because 
neither Bacon nor Mr. Montagu has shown a single precedent. 

How then stands the case ? Even thus : Bacon was not con- 
forming to an usage then generally admitted to be proper. He 
was not even the last lingering adherent of an old abuse. It 
would have been sufficiently disgraceful to such a man to be in 
this last situation. Yet this last situation would have been 
honourable compared with that in which he stood. He was 
guilty of attempting to introduce into the courts of law an odious 
abuse for which no precedent could be found. Intellectually, he 
was better fitted than any man that England has ever produced 
r> 2 



52 LORD BACON. 

for the work of improving her institutions. But, unhappily, we 
see that he did not scruple to exert his great powers for the 
purpose of introducing into those institutions new corruptions 
of the foulest kind. 

The same, or nearly the same, may be said of the torturing 
of Peacham. If it be true that in the time of James the First, 
the propriety of torturing prisoners was generally allowed, we 
should admit this as an excuse, though we should admit it less 
readily in the case of such a man as Bacon than in the case of 
an ordinary lawyer or politician. But the fact is, that the prac- 
tice of torturing prisoners was then generally acknowledged by 
lawyers to be illegal, and was execrated by the public as bar- 
barous. More than thirty years before Peacham's trial, that 
practice was so loudly condemned by the voice of the nation, that 
Lord Burleigh found it necessary to publish an apology for 
having occasionally resorted to it. But, though the dangers 
which then threatened the government were of a very different 
kind from those which were to be apprehended from any thing 
that Peacham could write, though the life of the Queen and the 
dearest interests of the state were in jeopardy, though the cir- 
cumstances were such that all ordinary laws might seem to be 
superseded by that highest law, the public safety, the apology 
did not satisfy the country : and the Queen found it expedient 
to issue an order positively forbidding the torturing of state- 
prisoners on any pretence whatever. From that time, the 
practice of torturing, which had always been unpopular, which 
had always been illegal, had also been unusual. It is well 
known that in 1628, only fourteen years after the time when 
Bacon went to the Tower to listen to the yells of Peacham, 
the judges decided that Felton, a criminal who neither deserved 
nor was likely to obtain any extraordinary indulgence, could 
not lawfully be put to the question. We therefore say that 
Bacon stands in a very different situation from that in which 
Mr. Montagu tries to place him. Bacon was her-e distinctly 
behind his age. He was one of the last of the tools of power 



LORD BACON. 53 

who persisted in a practice the most barbarous and the most 
absurd that has ever disgraced jurisprudence, in a practice of 
which, in the preceding generation, Elizabeth and her ministers 
had been ashamed, in a practice which, a few years later, no 
sycophant in all the Inns of Court had the heart or the forehead 
to defend.* 

Bacon far behind his age ! Bacon far behind Sir Edward 
Coke ! Bacon clinging to exploded abuses ! Bacon withstanding 
the progress of improvement ! Bacon struggling to push back 
the human mind ! The words seem strange. They sound like 
a contradiction in terms. Yet the fact is even so : and the ex- 
planation may be readily found by any person who is not blinded 
by prejudice. Mr. Montagu cannot believe that so extraordinary 
a man as Bacon could be guilty of a bad action ; as if history 
were not made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men, as 
if all the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all 
the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions, had 
not been extraordinary men, as if nine tenths of the calamities 
which have befallen the human race had any other origin than 
the union of high intelligence with low desires. 

Bacon knew this well. He has told us that there are persons 
" scientia tanquam angeli alati, cupiditatibus vero tanquam ser- 
pentes qui humi reptantf ;" and it did not require his admirable 

* Since this Review was written, Mr. Jardine has published a very 
learned and ingenious Reading on the use of torture in England. It has 
not however been thought necessary to make any change in the observations 
on Peacham's case. 

It is impossible to discuss, within the limits of a note, the extensive ques- 
tion raised by Mr. Jardine. It is sufficient here to say that every argument 
by which he attempts to show that the use of the rack was anciently a lawful 
exertion of royal prerogative may be urged with equal force, nay with far 
greater force, to prove the lawfulness of benevolences, of ship-money, of 
Mompesson's patent, of Eliot's imprisonment, of every abuse, without excep- 
tion, which is condemned by the Petition of Right and the Declaration of 
Right. 

f De Augmentis, Lib. v. Cap. 1. 

D 3 



54 LORD BACON. 

sagacity and his extensive converse with mankind to make the 
discovery. Indeed, be had only to look within. The difference 
between the soaring angel and the creeping snake was but a 
type of the difference between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon 
the Attorney-General, Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon 
seeking for the Seals. Those who survey only one half of his 
character may speak of him with unmixed admiration, or 
with unmixed contempt. But those only judge of him correctly 
who take in at one view Bacon in speculation and Bacon in 
action. They will have no difficulty in comprehending how 
one and the same man should have been far before his age and 
far behind it, in one line the boldest and most useful of inno- 
vators, in another line the most obstinate champion of the foulest 
abuses. In his library, all his rare powers were under the 
guidance of an honest ambition, of an enlarged philanthropy, of 
a sincere love of truth. There, no temptation drew him away 
from the right course. Thomas Aquinas could pay no fees. 
Duns Scotus could confer no peerages. The Master of the 
Sentences had no rich reversions in his gift. Far different was 
the situation of the great philosopher when he came forth from 
his study and his laboratory to mingle with the crowd which 
filled the galleries of Whitehall. In all that crowd there was 
no man equally qualified to render great and lasting services to 
mankind. But in all that crowd there was not a heart more set 
on things which no man ought to suffer to be necessary to his 
happiness, on things which can often be obtained only by the 
sacrifice of integrity and honour. To be the leader of the human 
race in the career of improvement, to found on the ruins of 
ancient intellectual dynasties a more prosperous and a more 
enduring empire, to be revered by the latest generations as 
the most illustrious among the benefactors of mankind, all this 
was within his reach. But all this availed him nothing while 
some quibbling special pleader was promoted before him to the 
bench, while some heavy country gentleman took precedence 



L.ORD BACON. 55 

of him by virtue of a purchased coronet, while some pandar, 
happy in a fair wife, could obtain a more cordial salute from 
Buckingham, while some buffoon, versed in all the latest scandal 
of the court, could draw a louder laugh from James. 

During a long course of years, Bacon's unworthy ambition 
was crowned with success. His sagacity early enabled him to 
perceive who was likely to become the most powerful man in 
the kingdom. He probably knew the King's mind before it 
was known to the King himself, and attached himself to 
Villiers, while the less discerning crowd of courtiers still con- 
tinued to fawn on Somerset. The influence of the younger 
favourite became greater daily. The contest between the rivals 
might, however, have lasted long, but for that frightful crime 
which, in spite of all that could be effected by the research and 
ingenuity of historians, is still covered with so mysterious an 
obscurity. The descent of Somerset had been a gradual and 
almost imperceptible lapse. It now became a headlong fall ; 
and Villiers, left without a competitor, rapidly rose to a height 
of power such as no subject since Wolsey had attained. 

There were many points of resemblance between the two 
celebrated courtiers who, at different times, extended their 
patronage to Bacon. It is difficult to say whether Essex or 
Villiers was more eminently distinguished by those graces of 
person and manner which have always been rated in courts at 
much more than their real value. Both were constitutionally 
brave ; and both, like most men who are constitutionally brave, 
were open and unreserved. Both were rash and headstrong. 
Both were destitute of the abilities and of the information which 
are necessary to statesmen. Yet both, trusting to the accom- 
plishments which had made them conspicuous in tilt-yards and 
ball-rooms, aspired to rule the state. Both owed their elevation 
to the personal attachment of the sovereign ; and in both cases 
this attachment was of so eccentric a kind, that it perplexed 
observers, that it still continues to perplex historians, and that 
d 4 



56 LORD BACON. 

it gave rise to much scandal which we are inclined to think 
unfounded. Each of them treated the sovereign whose favour 
he enjoyed with a rudeness which approached to insolence. 
This petulance ruined Essex, who had to deal with a spirit 
naturally as proud as his own, and accustomed, during near 
half a century, to the most respectful observance. But there 
was a wide difference between the haughty daughter of Henry 
and her successor. James was timid from the cradle. His 
nerves, naturally weak, had not been fortified by reflection or 
by habit. His life, till he came to England, had been a series 
of mortifications and humiliations. With all his high notions 
of the origin and extent of his prerogatives, he was never his 
own master for a day. In spite of his kingly title, in spite of 
his despotic theories, he was to the last a slave at heart. Vil- 
liers treated him like one ; and this course, though adopted, we 
believe, merely from temper, succeeded as well as if it had been 
a system of policy formed after mature deliberation. 

In generosity, in sensibility, in capacity for friendship, Essex 
far surpassed Buckingham. Indeed, Buckingham can scarcely 
be said to have had any friend, with the exception of the two 
princes over whom successively he exercised so wonderful an 
influence. Essex was to the last adored by the people. Buck- 
ingham was always a most unpopular man, except perhaps for a 
very short time after his return from the childish visit to Spain. 
Essex fell a victim to the rigour of the government amidst the 
lamentations of the people. Buckingham, execrated by the 
people, and solemnly declared a public enemy by the representa- 
tives of the people, fell by the hand of one of the people, and 
was lamented by none but his master. 

The way in which the two favourites acted towards Bacon 
was highly chai'acteristic, and may serve to illustrate the old 
and true saying, that a man is generally more inclined to feel 
kindly towards one on whom he has conferred favours than 
towards one from whom he has received them. Essex loaded 



LOED BACON. 57 

Bacon with benefits, and never thought that he had done enough. 
It seems never to have crossed the mind of the powerful and 
wealthy noble that the poor barrister whom he treated with 
such munificent kindness was not his equal. It was, we have 
no doubt, with perfect sincerity that the Earl declared that he 
would willingly give his sister or daughter in marriage to his 
friend. He was in general more than sufficiently sensible of 
his own merits ; but he did not seem to know that he had ever 
deserved well of Bacon. On that cruel day when they saw 
each other for the last time at the bar of the Lords, Essex taxed 
his perfidious friend with unkindness and insincerity, but never 
with ingratitude. Even in such a moment, more bitter than 
the bitterness of death, that noble heart was too great to vent 
itself in such a reproach. 

Villi ers, on the other hand, owed much to Bacon. When 
their acquaintance began, Sir Francis was a man of mature age, 
of high station, and of established fame as a politician, an advo- 
cate, and a writer. Villiers was little more than a boy, a 
younger son of a house then of no great note. He was but just 
entering on the career of court favour ; and none but the most 
discerning observers could as yet perceive that lie was likely to 
distance all his competitors. The countenance and advice of a 
man so highly distinguished as the Attorney-General must have 
been an object of the highest importance to the young adven- 
turer. But though Villiers was the obliged party, he was far 
less warmly attached to Bacon, and far less delicate in his con- 
duct towards Bacon, than Essex had been. 

To do the new favourite justice, he early exerted his influence 
in behalf of his illustrious friend. In 1616 Sir Francis was 
sworn of the Privy Council, and in March, 1617, on the retire- 
ment of Lord Brackley, was appointed Keeper of the Great 
Seal. 

On the seventh of May, the first day of term, he rode in state 
to Westminster Hall, with the Lord Treasurer on his risht 



58 LORD 1UCON. 

hand, the Lord Privy Seal on his left, a long procession of 
students and ushers before him, and a crowd of peers, privy- 
councillors, and judges following in his train. Having entered 
his court, he addressed the splendid auditory in a grave and 
dignified speech, which proves how well he understood those 
judicial duties which he afterwards performed so ill. Even at 
that moment, the proudest moment of his life in the estimation 
of the vulgar, and, it may be, even in his own, he cast back a 
look of lingering affection towards those noble pursuits from 
which, as it seemed, he was about to be estranged. " The depth 
of the three long vacations," said he, " I would reserve in some 
measure free from business of estate, and for studies, arts, and 
sciences, to which of my own nature I am most inclined." 

The years during which Bacon held the Great Seal were 
among the darkest and most shameful in English history. Every 
thing at home and abroad was mismanaged. First came the 
execution of Raleigh, an act which, if done in a proper manner, 
might have been defensible, but which, under all the circum 
stances, must be considered as a dastardly murder. Worse was 
behind, the war of Bohemia, the successes of Tilly and Spinola, 
the Palatinate conquered, the King's son-in-law an exile, the 
house of Austria dominant on the Continent, the Protestant 
religion and the liberties of the Germanic body trodden under 
foot. Meanwhile, the wavering and cowardly policy of England 
furnished matter of ridicule to all the nations of Europe. The 
love of peace which James professed would, even when in- 
dulged to an impolitic excess, have been respectable, if it had 
proceeded from tenderness for his people. But the truth is 
that, while he had nothing to spare for the defence of the natural 
allies of England, he resorted without scruple to the most illegal 
and oppressive devices, for the purpose of enabling Buckingham 
and Buckingham's relations to outshine the ancient aristocracy 
of the realm. Benevolences were exacted. Patents of mono- 
poly were multiplied. All the resources which could have been 



LORD BACON. 59 

employed to replenish a beggared Exchequer, at the close of a 
ruinous war, were put in motion during this season of ignomi- 
nious peace. 

The vices of the administration must be chiefly ascribed to 
the weakness of the King and to the levity and violence of the 
favourite. But it is impossible to acquit the Lord Keeper of 
all share in the guilt. For those odious patents, in particular, 
which passed the Great Seal while it was in his charge, he 
must be held answerable. In the speech which he made on 
first taking his seat in his court, he had pledged himself to 
discharge this important part of his functions with the greatest 
caution and impartiality. He had declared that he " would 
walk in the light," " that men should see that no particular turn 
or end led him, but a general rule." Mr. Montagu would have 
us believe that Bacon acted up to these professions, and says 
that " the power of the favourite did not deter the Lord Keeper 
from staying grants and patents when his public duty demanded 
this interposition." Does Mr. Montagu consider patents of 
monopoly as good things ? Or does he mean to say that Bacon 
staid every patent of monopoly that came before him ? Of all 
patents in our history, the most disgraceful was that which was 
granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, supposed to be the original of 
Massinger's Overreach, and to Sir Francis Michell, from whom 
Justice Greedy is supposed to have been drawn, for the exclu- 
sive manufacturing of gold and silver lace. The effect of this 
monopoly was of course that the metal employed in the manu- 
facture was adulterated to the great loss of the public. But 
this was a trifle. The patentees were armed with powers as 
great as have ever been given to farmers of the revenue in the 
worst governed countries. They were authorised to search 
houses and to arrest interlopers ; and these formidable powers 
were used for purposes viler than even those for which they 
were given, for the wreaking of old grudges, and lor the 
corrupting of female chastity. Was not this a case in which 



60 LORD BACON. 

public duty demanded the interposition of the Lord Keeper? 
And did the Lord Keeper interpose ? He did. He wrote to 
inform the King that he " had considered of the fitness and 
conveniency of the gold and silver thread business," " that it 
was convenient that it should be settled," that he " did conceive 
apparent likelihood that it would redound much to his Majesty'.', 
profit," that, therefore, " it were good it were settled with all 
convenient speed." The meaning of all this was, that certain 
of the house of Villiers were to go shares with Overreach and 
Greedy in the plunder of the public. This was the way in 
which, when the favourite pressed for patents, lucrative to his 
relations and to his creatures, ruinous and vexatious to the 
body of the people, the chief guardian of the laws interposed. 
Having assisted the patentees to obtain this monopoly, Bacon 
assisted them also in the steps which they took for the purpose 
of guarding it. He committed several people to close confine- 
ment for disobeying his tyrannical edict. It is needless to say 
more. Our readers are now able to judge whether, in the 
matter of patents, Bacon acted conformably to his professions, 
or deserved the praise which his biographer has bestowed on him. 
In his judicial capacity his conduct was not less reprehensible. 
He suffered Buckingham to dictate many of his decisions. 
Bacon knew as well as any man that a judge who listens to 
private solicitations is a disgrace to his post. He had himself, 
before he was raised to the woolsack, represented this strongly 
to Villiers, then just entering on his career. "By no means," 
said Sir Francis, in a letter of advice addressed to the young 
courtier, " by no means be you persuaded to interpose yourself, 
either by word or letter, in any cause depending in any court 
of justice, nor suffer any great man to do it where you can 
hinder it. If it should prevail, it perverts justice ; but, if the 
judge be so just and of such courage as he ought to be, as not 
to be inclined thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicion 
behind it." Yet he had not been Lord Keeper a month when 



LOED BACON. 61 

Buckingham began to interfere in Chancery suits ; and Buck- 
ingham's interference was, as might have been expected, suc- 
cessful. 

Mr. Montagu's reflections on the excellent passage which we 
have quoted above are exceedingly amusing. " No man," says 
he, " more deeply felt the evils which then existed of the inter- 
ference of the Crown and of statesmen to influence judges. 
How beautifully did he admonish Buckingham, regardless as he 
proved of all admonition ! " We should be glad to know how 
it can be expected that admonition will be regarded by him 
who receives it, when it is altogether neglected by him who 
gives it. We do not defend Buckingham : but what was his 
guilt to Bacon's ? Buckingham was young, ignorant, thought- 
less, dizzy with the rapidity of his ascent and the height of his 
position. That he should be eager to serve his relations, his 
flatterers, his mistresses, that he should not fully apprehend the 
immense importance of a pure administration of justice, that he 
should think more about those who were bound to him by 
private ties than about the public interest, all this was perfectly 
natural, and not altogether unpardonable. Those who intrust 
a petulant, hot-blooded, ill-informed lad with power, are more 
to blame than he for the mischief which he may do with it. 
How could it be expected of a lively page, raised by a wild 
freak of fortune to the first influence in the empire, that he 
should have bestowed any serious thought on the principles 
which ought to guide judicial decisions ? Bacon was the ablest 
public man then living in Europe. He was near sixty years 
old. He had thought much, and to good purpose, on the 
general principles of law. He had for many years borne a part 
daily in the administration of justice. It was impossible that a 
man with a tithe of his sagacity and experience should not have 
known that a judge who suffers friends or patrons to dictate his 
decrees violates the plainest rules of duty. In fact, as we have 
seen, he knew this well : he expressed it admirably. Neither 



62 LORD BACON. 

on this occasion nor on any other could his bad actions be 
attributed to any defect of the head. They sprang from quite 
a different cause. 

A man who stooped to render such services to others was not 
likely to be scrupulous as to the means by which he enriched 
himself. He and his dependents accepted large presents from 
persons who were engaged in Chancery suits. The amount of 
the plunder which he collected in this way it is impossible to 
estimate. There can be no doubt that he received very much 
more than was proved on his trial, though, it may be, less than 
was suspected by the public. His enemies stated his illicit 
gains at a hundred thousand pounds. But this was probably 
an exaggeration. 

It was long before the day of reckoning arrived. During 
the interval between the second and third parliaments of James, 
the nation was absolutely governed by the Crown. The pros- 
pects of the Lord Keeper were bright and serene. His great 
place rendered the splendour of his talents even more con- 
spicuous, and gave an additional charm to the serenity of his 
temper, the courtesy of his manners, and the eloquence of his 
conversation. The pillaged suitor might mutter. The austei'e 
Puritan patriot might, in his retreat, grieve that one on whom 
God had bestowed without measure all the abilities which 
qualify men to take the lead in great reforms should be found 
among the adherents of the worst abuses. But the murmurs of 
the suitor and the lamentations of the patriot had scarcely any 
avenue to the ears of the powerful. The King, and the minis- 
ter who was the King's master, smiled on their illustrious 
flatterer. The whole crowd of courtiers and nobles sought his 
favour with emulous eagerness. Men of wit and learning 
hailed with delight the elevation of one who had so signally 
shown that a man of profound learning and of brilliant wit 
might understand, far better than any plodding dunce, the art 
of thriving in the world 



LORD BACON. 63 

Once, and but once, this course of prosperity was for a mo 
ment interrupted. It should seem that even Bacon's brain was 
not strong enough to bear without some discomposure the in- 
ebriating effect of so much good fortune. For some time after 
his elevation, he showed himself a little wanting in that wari- 
ness and self-command to which, more than even to his tran- 
scendent talents, his elevation was to be ascribed. He was by 
no means a good hater. The temperature of his revenge, like 
that of his gratitude, was scarcely ever more than lukewarm. 
But there was one person whom he had long regarded with an 
animosity which, though studiously suppressed, was perhaps 
the stronger for the suppression. The insults and injuries 
which, when a young man struggling into note and professional 
practice, he had received from Sir Edward Coke, were such as 
might move the most placable nature to resentment. About 
the time at which Bacon received the Seals, Coke had, on 
account of his contumacious resistance to the royal pleasure, 
been deprived of his seat in the Court of King's Bench, and had 
ever since languished in retirement. But Coke's opposition to 
the Court, we fear, was the effect not of good principles, but of 
a bad temper. Perverse and testy as he was, he wanted true 
fortitude and dignity of character. His obstinacy, unsupported 
by virtuous motives, was not proof against disgrace. He 
solicited a reconciliation with the favourite, and his solicitations 
were successful. Sir John Villiers, the brother of Buckingham, 
was looking out for a rich wife. Coke had a large fortune and 
an unmarried daughter. A bargain was struck. But Lady 
Coke, the lady whom twenty years before Essex had wooed on 
behalf of Bacon, would not hear of the match. A violent and 
scandalous family quarrel followed. The mother carried the 
girl away by stealth. The father pursued them, and regained 
possession of his daughter by force. The King was then in 
Scotland, and Buckingham had attended him thither. Bacon 
was, during their absence, at the head of affairs in England. 



64 LORD BACON. 

He felt towards Cuke as much malevolence as it was in his 
nature to feel towards any body. His wisdom had been laid to 
sleep by prosperity. In an evil hour he determined to interfere 
in the disputes which agitated his enemy's household. He 
declared for the wife, countenanced the Attorney- General in 
filing an information in the Star Chamber against the husband, 
and wrote letters to the King and the favourite against the 
proposed marriage. The strong language which he used in 
those letters shows that, sagacious as he was, he did not quite 
know his place, and that he was not fully acquainted with the 
extent either of Buckingham's power, or of the change which 
the possession of that power had produced in Buckingham's 
character. He soon had a lesson which he never forgot. The 
favourite received the news of the Lord Keeper's interference 
with feelings of the most violent resentment, and made the King 
even more angry than himself. Bacon's eyes were at once 
opened to his error, and to all its possible consequences. He 
had been elated, if not intoxicated, by greatness. The shock 
sobered him in an instant. He was all himself again. He 
apologized submissively for his interference. He directed the 
Attorney-General to stop the proceedings against Coke. He 
sent to tell Lady Coke that he could do nothing for her. He 
announced to both the families that he was desirous to promote 
the connection. Having given these proofs of contrition, he 
ventured to present himself before Buckingham. But the 
young upstart did not think that he had yet sufficiently humbled 
an old man who had been his friend and his benefactor, who 
was the highest civil functionary in the realm, and the most 
eminent man of letters in the world. It is said that on two 
successive days Bacon repaired to Buckingham's house, that on 
two successive days he was suffered to remain in an ante-cham- 
ber among foot-boys, seated on an old wooden box, with the 
Great Seal of England at his side, and that when at length he 
was admitted, he flung himself on the floor, kissed the favourite's 
feet, and vowed never to rise till he was forgiven. Sir Anthony 



LORD BACON. 65 

Weldon, on whose authority this story rests, is likely enough to 
have exaggerated the meanness of Bacon and the insolence of 
Buckingham. But it is difficult to imagine that so circum- 
stantial a narrative, written by a person who avers that he was 
present on the occasion, can be wholly without foundation ; and, 
unhappily, there is little in the character either of the favourite 
or of the Lord Keeper to make the narrative improbable. It is 
certain that a reconciliation took place on terms humiliating to 
Bacon, who never more ventured to cross any purpose of any 
body who bore the name of Villiers. He put a strong curb on 
those angry passions which had for the first time in his life 
mastered his prudence. He went through the forms of a re- 
conciliation with Coke, and did his best, by seeking opportunities 
of paying little civilities, and by avoiding all that could produce 
collision, to tame the untameable ferocity of his old enemy. 

In the main, however, Bacon's life, while he held the Great 
Seal, was, in outward appearance, most enviable. In London he 
lived with great dignity at York House, the venerable mansion 
of his father. Here it was, that, in January, 1620, he celebrated 
his entrance into his sixtieth year amidst a splendid circle of 
friends. He had then exchanged the appellation of Keeper for 
the higher title of Chancellor. Ben Jonson was one of the 
party, and wrote on the occasion some of the happiest of his 
rugged rhymes. All things, he tells us, seemed to smile about 
the old house, " the fire, the wine, the men." The spectacle of 
the accomplished host, after a life marked by no great disaster, 
entering on a green old age, in the enjoyment of riches, power, 
high honours, undiminished mental activity, and vast literary 
reputation, made a strong impression on the poet, if we may 
judge from those well-known lines : 

" England's high Chancellor, the destined heir, 
In his soft cradle, to his father's chair, 
Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full 
Out of their choicest and their whitest wooL * 
B 



t>6 LORD BACON. 

In the intervals of rest which Bacon's political and judicial 
functions afforded, he was in the habit of retiring to Gorham- 
bury. At that place his business was literature, and his fa- 
vourite amusement gardening, which in one of his most inter- 
esting Essa} r s he calls " the purest of human pleasures." In his 
magnificent grounds he erected, at a cost of ten thousand pounds, 
a retreat to which he repaired when he wished to avoid all 
visiters, and to devote himself wholly to study. On such oc- 
casions, a few young men of distinguished talents were some- 
times the companions of his retirement ; and among them his 
quick eye soon discerned the superior abilities of Thomas 
Hobbes. It is not probable, however, that he fully appreciated 
the powers of his disciple, or foresaw the vast influence, both 
for good and for evil, which that most vigorous and acute of 
human intellects was destined to exercise on the two succeeding 
generations. 

In January, 1621, Bacon had reached the zenith of his for- 
tunes. He had just- published the Novum Organum ; and that 
extraordinary book had drawn forth the warmest expressions of 
admiration from the ablest men in Europe. He had obtained 
honours of a widely different kind, but perhaps not less valued 
by him. He had been created Baron Verulam. He had sub- 
sequently been raised to the higher dignity of Viscount St. 
Albans. His patent was drawn in the most flattering terms, 
and the Prince of Wales signed it as a witness. The ceremony 
of investiture was performed with great state at Theobalds, and 
Buckingham condescended to be one of the chief actors. Pos- 
terity has felt that the greatest of English philosophers could 
derive no accession of dignity from any title which James could 
bestow, and, in defiance of the royal letters patent, has ob- 
stinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Viscount St. 
Albans. 

In a few weeks was signally brought to the test the value of 
those objects for which Bacon had sullied his integrity, had 



LORD BACON. 67 

resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obli- 
gations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, 
had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with judges, had 
tortured prisoners, had plundered suitors, had wasted on paltry- 
intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed in- 
tellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of 
men. A sudden and tei'rible reverse was at hand. A Parlia- 
ment had been summoned. After six years of silence the voice 
of the nation was again to be heard. Only three days after the 
pageant which was performed at Theobalds in honour of Bacon, 
the Houses met. 

Want of money had, as usual, induced the King to convoke 
his Parliament. It may be doubted, however, whether, if he or 
his ministers had been at all aware of the state of public feeling, 
they would not have tried any expedient, or borne with any 
inconvenience, rather than have ventured to face the deputies 
of a justly exasperated nation. But they did not discern those 
times. Indeed almost all the political blunders of James, and 
of his more unfortunate son, arose from one great error. During 
the fifty years which preceded the Long Parliament a great and 
progressive change was taking place in the public mind. The 
nature and extent of this change was not in the least understood 
by either of the first two Kings of the House of Stuart, or by 
any of their advisers. That the nation became more and more 
discontented every year, that every House of Commons was 
more unmanageable than that which had preceded it, were facts 
which it was impossible not to perceive. But the Court could 
not understand why these things were so. The Court could not 
see that the English people and the English Government, though 
they might once have been well suited to each other, were suited 
to each other no longer ; that the nation had outgrown its old 
institutions, was every day more uneasy under them, was 
pressing against them, and would soon burst through them. 
The alarming phagnomena, the existence of which no sycophant 



68 LORD BACON. 

could deny, were ascribed to every cause except the true one. 
" In my first Parliament," said James, " I was a novice. In my 
next, there was a kind of beasts called undertakers," and so 
forth. In the third Parliament he could hardly be called a 
novice, and those beasts, the undertakers, did not exist. Yet 
his third Parliament gave him more trouble than either the first 
or the second. 

The Parliament had no sooner met than the House of Com- 
mons proceeded, in a temperate and respectful, but most deter- 
mined manner, to discuss the public grievances. Their first 
attacks were directed against those odious patents, under cover 
of which Buckingham and his creatures had pillaged and op- 
pressed the nation. The vigour with which these proceedings 
were conducted spread dismay through the Court. Bucking- 
ham thought himself in danger, and, in his alarm, had recourse 
to an adviser who had lately acquired considerable influence 
over him, Williams, Dean of Westminster. This person had 
already been of great use to the favourite in a very delicate 
matter. Buckingham had set his heart on marrying Lady 
Catherine Manners, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Rut- 
land. But the difficulties were great. The Earl was haughty 
and impracticable, and the young lady was a Catholic. Williams 
soothed the pride of the father, and found arguments which, for 
a time at least, quieted the conscience of the daughter. For 
these services he had been rewarded with considerable prefer- 
ment in the Church ; and he was now rapidly rising to the 
same place in the regard of Buckingham which had formerly 
been occupied by Bacon. 

Williams was one of those who are wiser for others than for 
themselves. His own public life was unfortunate, and was 
made unfortunate by his strange want of judgment and self- 
command at several important conjunctures. But the counsel 
which he gave on this occasion showed no want of worldly 
wisdom. He advised the favourite to abandon all thoughts of 



LORD BACON. 69 

defending the monopolies, to find some foreign embassy for his 
brother Sir Edward, who was deeply implicated in the villanies 
of Mompesson, and to leave the other offenders to the justice of 
Parliament. Buckingham received this advice with the warmest 
expressions of gratitude, and declared that a load had been 
lifted from his heart. He then repaired with Williams to the 
royal presence. They found the King engaged in earnest con- 
sultation with Prince Charles. The plan of operations proposed 
by the Dean was fully discussed, and approved in all its parts. 

The first victims whom the Court abandoned to the ven- 
geance of the Commons were Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir 
Francis Michell. It was some time before Bacon began to 
entertain any apprehensions. His talents and his address gave 
him great influence in the house of which he had lately become 
a member, as indeed they must have done in any assembly. 
In the House of Commons he had many personal friends and 
many warm admirers. But at length, about six weeks after the 
meeting of Parliament, the storm burst. 

A committee of the lower House had been appointed to in- 
quire into the state of the Courts of Justice. On the fifteenth 
of March the chairman of that committee, Sir Robert Philips, 
member for Bath, reported that great abuses had been disco- 
vered. " The person," said he, " against whom these things are 
alleged is no less than the Lord Chancellor, a man so endued 
with all parts, both of nature and art, as that I will say no 
more of him, being not able to say enough." Sir Robert then 
proceeded to state, in the most temperate manner, the nature of 
the charges. A person of the name of Aubrey had a case 
depending in Chancery. He had been almost ruined by law- 
expenses, and his patience had been exhausted by the delays of 
the court. He received a hint from some of the hangers-on of 
the Chancellor that a present of one hundred pounds would 
expedite matters. The poor man had not the sum required. 
However, having found out an usurer who accommodated him 
e 3 



70 LORD BACON. 

with it at high interest, he carried it to York House. The 
Chancellor took the money, and his dependents assured the 
suitor that all would go right, Aubrey was, however, disap- 
pointed ; for, after considerable delay, " a killing decree" was 
pronounced against him. Another suitor of the name of Egerton 
complained that he had been induced by two of the Chancellor's 
jackals to make his Lordship a present of four hundred pounds, 
and that, nevertheless, he had not been able to obtain a decree 
in his favour. The evidence to these facts was overwhelming. 
Bacon's friends could only entreat the House to suspend its 
judgment, and to send up the case to the Lords, in a form less 
offensive than an impeachment. 

On the nineteenth of March the King sent a message to the 
Commons, expressing his deep regret that so eminent a person 
as the Chancellor should be suspected of misconduct. His 
Majesty declared that he had no wish to screen the guilty from 
justice, and proposed to appoint a new kind of tribunal, con- 
sisting of eighteen commissioners, who might be chosen from 
among the members of the two Houses, to investigate the 
matter. The Commons were not disposed to depart from their 
regular course of proceeding. On the same day they held a 
conference with the Lords, and delivered in the heads of the 
accusation against the Chancellor. At this conference Bacon 
was not present. Overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and 
abandoned by all those in whom he had weakly put his trust, he 
had shut himself up in his chamber from the eyes of men. The 
dejection of his mind soon disordered his body. Buckingham, 
who visited him by the King's order, " found his Lordship very 
sick and heavy." It appears from a pathetic letter which the 
unhappy man addressed to the Peers on the day of the confer- 
ence, that he neither expected nor wished to survive his dis- 
grace. During several days he remained in his bed, refusing 
to see any human being. He passionately told his attendants 
to leave him, to forget him, never again to name his name, never 



LORD EACON. 71 

to remember that there had been such a man in the world. In 
the mean time fresh instances of corruption were every day 
brought to the knowledge of Ids accusers. The number of 
charges rapidly increased from two to twenty-three. The Lords 
entered on the investigation of the case with laudable alacrity. 
Some witnesses were examined at the bar of the House. A 
select committee was appointed to take the depositions of others ; 
and the inquiry was rapidly proceeding, when, on the twenty- 
sixth of March, the King adjourned the Parliament for three 
weeks. 

This measure revived Bacon's hopes. He made the most of 
his short respite. He attempted to work on the feeble mind of 
the King. He appealed to all the strongest feelings of James, 
to his fears, to his vanity, to his high notions of prerogative. 
Would the Solomon of the age commit so gross an error as to 
encourage the encroaching spirit of Parliaments ? Would God's 
anointed, accountable to God alone, pay homage to the clamo- 
rous multitude ? " Those," exclaimed Bacon, " who now strike 
at the Chancellor will soon strike at the Crown. I am the first 
sacrifice. I wish I may be the last." But all his eloquence and 
address were employed in vain. Indeed, whatever Mr. Mon- 
tagu may say, we are firmly convinced that it was not in the 
King's power to save Bacon, without having recourse to mea- 
sures which would have convulsed the realm. The Crown had 
not sufficient influence over the Parliament to procure an 
acquittal in so clear a case of guilt. And to dissolve a Parlia- 
ment which is universally allowed to have been one of the best 
Parliaments that ever sat, which had acted liberally and re- 
spectfully towards the Sovereign, and which enjoyed in the 
highest degree the favour of the people, only in order to stop a 
grave, temperate, and constitutional inquiry into the personal 
integrity of the first judge in the kingdom, would have been a 
measure more scandalous and absurd than any of those which 
were the ruin of the House of Stuart. Such a measure, while 



72 LORD BACON. 

it would have been as fatal to the Chancellor'? honour as a con- 
viction, would have endangered the very existence of the mo- 
narchy. The King, acting by the advice of Williams, very 
properly refused to engage in a dangerous struggle with his 
people, for the purpose of saving from legal condemnation a 
minister whom it was impossible to save from dishonour. He 
advised Bacon to plead guilty, and promised to do all in his 
power to mitigate the punishment. Mr. Montagu is exceed- 
ingly angry with James on this account. But though we are, in 
general, very little inclined to admire that Prince's conduct, we 
really think that his advice was, under all the circumstances, 
the best advice that could have been given. 

On the seventeenth of April the Houses reassembled, and the 
Lords resumed their inquiries into the abuses of the Court of 
Chancery. On the twenty-second, Bacon addressed to the Peers 
a letter, which the Prince of Wales condescended to deliver. 
In this artful and pathetic composition, the Chancellor acknow- 
ledged his guilt in guarded and general terms, and, while acknow- 
ledging, endeavoured to palliate it. This, however, was not 
thought sufficient by his judges. They required a more particu- 
lar confession, and sent him a copy of the charges. On the 
thirtieth, he delivered a paper in which he admitted, with few 
and unimportant reservations, the truth of the accusations 
brought against him, and threw himself entirely on the mercy 
of his peers. " Upon advised consideration of the charges," said 
he, " descending into my own conscience, and calling my me- 
mory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and inge- 
nuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce 
all defence." 

The Lords came to a resolution that the Chancellor's confession 
appeared to be full and ingenuous, and sent a committee to inquire 
of him whether it was really subscribed by himself. The de- 
puties, among whom was Southampton, the common friend, 
many years before, of Bacon and Essex, performed their duty 



LORD BACON. 73 

with great delicacy. Indeed the agonies of such a mind and 
the degradation of such a name might well have softened the 
most obdurate natures. " My Lords," said Bacon, " it is my act, 
my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to 
a broken reed." They withdrew ; and he again retired to his 
chamber in the deepest dejection. The next day, the sergeant- 
at-arms and the usher of the House of Lords came to conduct 
him to Westminster Hall, where sentence was to be pronounced. 
But they found him so unwell that he could not leave his bed ; 
and this excuse for his absence was readily accepted. In no 
quarter does there appear to have been the smallest desire to add 
to his humiliation. 

The sentence was, however, severe, the more severe, no doubt, 
because the Lords knew that it would not be executed, and that 
they had an excellent opportunity of exhibiting, at small cost, 
the inflexibility of their justice, and their abhorrence of corrup- 
tion. Bacon was condemned to pay a fine of forty thousand 
pounds, and to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's 
pleasure. He was declared incapable of holding any office in 
the State or of sitting in Parliament ; and he was banished for 
life from the verge of the Court. In such misery and shame 
ended that long career of worldly wisdom and worldly prosperity. 

Even at this pass Mr. Montagu does not desert his hero. He 
seems indeed to think that the attachment of an editor ought 
to be as devoted as that of Mr. Moore's lovers ; and cannot 
conceive what biography was made for, 

" if 'tis not the same 
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame." 1 

He assures us that Bacon was innocent, that he had the means 
of making a perfectly satisfactory defence, that when he 
"plainly and ingenuously confessed that he was guilty of 
corruption," and when he afterwards solemnly affirmed that his 
confession was " his act, bis hand, his heart." he was telling a 



74 LORD BACON. 

great lie, and that he refrained from bringing forward proofs of 
his innocence because he durst not disobey the King and the 
favourite, who, for their own selfish objects, pressed him to plead 
guilty. 

Now, in the first place, there is not the smallest reason to be- 
lieve that, if James and Buckingham had thought that Bacon 
had a good defence, they would have prevented him from 
making it. What conceivable motive had they for doing so? 
Mr. Montagu perpetually repeats that it was their interest to 
sacrifice Bacon. But he overlooks an obvious distinction. It 
was their interest to sacrifice Bacon on the supposition of his 
guilt, but not on the supposition of his innocence. James was 
very properly unwilling to run the risk of pi'otecting his Chan- 
cellor against the Parliament. But if the Chancellor had been 
able, by force of argument, to obtain an acquittal from the 
Parliament, we have no doubt that both the King and Villiers 
would have heartily rejoiced. They would have rejoiced, not 
merely on account of their friendship for Bacon, which seems, 
however, to have been as sincere as most friendships of that 
sort, but on selfish grounds. Nothing could have strengthened 
the government more than such a victory. The King and the 
favourite abandoned the Chancellor because they were unable 
to avert his disgrace, and unwilling to share it. Mr. Montagu 
mistakes effect for cause. He thinks that Bacon did not prove 
his innocence because he was not supported by the Court. The 
truth evidently is that the Court did not venture to support 
Bacon, because he could not prove his innocence. 

Again, it seems strange that Mr. Montagu should not perceive 
that, while attempting to vindicate Bacon's reputation, he is 
really casting on it the foulest of all aspersions. He imputes to 
his idol a degree of meanness and depravity more loathsome 
than judicial corruption itself. A corrupt judge may have many 
good qualities. But a man who, to please a powerful patron, 
solemnly declares himself guilty of corruption when he knows 
himself to be innocent, must be a monster of servility and im- 



LOUD BACON. ?5 

pudence. Bacon was, to say nothing of his highest claims to 
respect, a gentleman, a nobleman, a scholar, a statesman, a man 
of the first consideration in society, a man far advanced in 
years. Is it possible to believe that such a man would, to gra- 
tify any human being, irreparably ruin his own character by his 
own act ? Imagine a grey-headed judge, full of years and 
honours, owning with tears, with pathetic assurances of his peni- 
tence and of his sincerity, that he has been guilty of shameful 
mal-practices, repeatedly asseverating the truth of his con- 
fession, subscribing it with his own hand, submitting to convic- 
tion, receiving a humiliating sentence and acknowledging its 
justice, and all this when he has it in his power to show that his 
conduct has been irreproachable! The thing is incredible. But 
if we admit it to be true, what must we think of such a man, if 
indeed he deserves the name of man, who thinks any thing that 
kings and minions can bestow more precious than honour, or 
any thing that they can inflict more terrible than infamy. 

Of this most disgraceful imputation we fully acquit Bacon. 
He had no defence ; and Mr. Montagu's affectionate attempt to 
make a defence for him has altogether failed. 

The grounds on which Mr. Montagu rests the case are two ; 
the first, that the taking of presents was usual, and, what he 
seems to consider as the same thing, not discreditable ; the 
second, that these presents were not taken as bribes. 

Mr. Montagu brings forward many facts in support of his 
first proposition. He is not content with showing that many 
English judges formerly received gifts from suitors, but collects 
similar instances from foreign nations and ancient times. He 
goes back to the commonwealths of Greece, and attempts to 
press into his service a line of Homer and a sentence of Plu- 
tarch, which, we fear, will hardly serve his turn. The gold of 
which Homer speaks was not intended to fee the judges, but was 
paid into court for the benefit of the successful litigant ; and 
the gratuities which Pericles, as Plutarch states, distributed 



76 LORD BACON. 

among the members of the Athenian tribunals, were legal wages 
paid out of the public revenue. We can supply Mr. Montagu 
with passages much more in point. Hesiod, who, like poor 
Aubrey, had a " killing decree " made against him in the Chan- 
cery of Ascra, forgot decorum so far that he ventured to desig- 
nate the learned persons who presided in that court, as fiaaiXfjac 
c u poty ay ovq. Plutarch and Diodorus have handed down to 
the latest ages the respectable name of Anytus, the son of An- 
themion, the first defendant who, eluding all the safeguards which 
the ingenuity of Solon could devise, succeeded in corrupting a 
bench of Athenian judges. We are indeed so far from grudging 
Mr. Montagu the aid of Greece, that we will give him Rome 
into the bargain. We acknowledge that the honourable senators 
who tried Verres received presents which were worth more than 
the fee-simple of York House and Gorhambury together, and 
that the no less honourable senators and knights who professed 
to believe in the alibi of Clodius obtained marks still more 
extraordinary of the esteem and gratitude of the defendant. la 
short, we are ready to admit that, before Bacon's time, and in 
Bacon's time, judges were in the habit of receiving gifts from 
suitors. 

But is this a defence ? We think not. The robberies of 
Cacus and Barabbas are no apology for those of Turpin. The 
conduct of the two men of Belial who swore away the life of 
Naboth has never been cited as an excuse for the perjuries of 
Oates and Dangerfield. Mr. Montagu has confounded two 
things which it is necessary carefully to distinguish from each 
other, if we wish to form a correct judgment of the characters 
of men of other countries and other times. That an immoral 
action is, in a particular society, generally considered as innocent, 
is a good plea for an individual who, being one of that society, 
and having adopted the notions which prevail among his neigh- 
bours, commits that action. But the circumstance that a great 
many people are in the habit of committing immoral actions is 



LORD BACON. 77 

no plea at all. We should think it unjust to call St. Louis a 
wicked man, because, in an age in which toleration was generally 
regarded as a sin, he persecuted heretics. We should think it 
unjust to call Cowper's friend, John Newton, a hypocrite and a 
monster, because, at a time when the slave-trade was commonly 
considered by the most respectable people as an innocent and 
beneficial traffic, he went, largely provided with hymn-books and 
hand-cuffs, on a Guinea voyage. But the circumstance that there 
are twenty thousand thieves in London is no excuse for a fellow 
who is caught breaking into a shop. No man is to be blamed 
for not making discoveries in morality, for not finding out that 
something which every body else thinks to be good is really bad. 
But, if a man does that which he and all around him know to 
be bad, it is no excuse for him that many others have done the 
same. We should be ashamed of spending so much time in 
pointing out so clear a distinction, but that Mr. Montagu seems 
altogether to overlook it. 

Now, to apply these principles to the case before us ; let Mr. 
Montagu prove that, in Bacon's age, the practices for which 
Bacon was punished were generally considered as innocent ; and 
we admit that he has made out his point. But this we defy him 
to do. That these practices were common we admit. But they 
were common just as all wickedness to which there is strong 
temptation always was and always will be common. They were 
common just as theft, cheating, perjury, adultery have always 
been common. They were common, not because people did 
not know what was right, but because people liked to do what 
was wrong. They were common, though prohibited by lav,-. 
They were common, though condemned by public opinion. 
They were common, because in that age law and public opinion 
united had not sufficient force to restrain the greediness of 
powerful and unprincipled magistrates. They were common, 
as every crime will be common when the gain to which it leads 
is great, and the chance of punishment small. But, though 



78 LORD BACON. 

common, they were universally allowed to be altogether unjusti- 
fiable ; they were in the highest degree odious ; and, though 
many were guilty of them, none had the audacity publicly to 
avow and defend them. 

We could give a thousand proofs that the opinion then enter- 
tained concerning these practices was such as we have described. 
But we will content ourselves with calling a single witness, 
honest Hugh Latimer. His sermons, preached more than 
seventy years before the inquiry into Bacon's conduct, abound 
with the sharpest invectives against those very practices of which 
Bacon was guilty, and which, as Mr, Montagu seems to think, 
nobody ever considered as blamable till Bacon was punished for 
them. "We could easily fill twenty pages with the homely, but 
just and forcible rhetoric of the brave old bishop. We shall 
select a few passages as fair specimens, and no more than fair 
specimens, of the rest. "Omnes diligunt munera. They all 
love bribes. Bribery is a princely kind of thieving. They will 
be waged by the rich, either to give sentence against the poor, 
or to put off the poor man's cause. This is the noble theft of 
princes and magistrates. They are bribe-takers. Nowadays 
they call them gentle rewards. Let them leave their colouring, 
and call them by their Christian name — bribes." And again ; 
" Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is. 
He had many lord deputies, lord presidents, and lieutenants 
under him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. 
It chanced he had under him in one of his dominions a briber, 
a gift- taker, a gratifier of rich men ; he followed gifts as fast as he 
that followed the pudding, a handmaker in his office to make his 
son a great man, as the old saying is : Happy is the child whose 
father goeth to the devil. The cry of the poor widow came to 
the emperor's ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and 
laid his skin in the chair of judgment, that all judges that should 
give judgment afterwards should sit in the same skin. Surely 
it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's 



LORD BACON. . 79 

skin. I pray God we may once see the skin in England." " I 
am sure/' says lie in another sermon, "this is scala itiferni, 
the right way to hell, to be covetous, to take bribes, and pervert 
justice. If a judge should ask me the way to hell, I would show 
him this way. First, let him be a covetous man ; let his heart 
be poisoned with covetousness. Then let him go a little further 
and take bribes; and, lastly, pervert judgment. Lo, here is the 
mother, and the daughter, and the daughter's daughter. Avarice 
is the mother: she brings forth bribe-taking, and bribe-taking 
perverting of judgment. There lacks a fourth thing to make up 
the mess, which, so help me God, if I were a judge, should be 
hangum tunm, a Tyburn tippet to take with him; an it weie 
the judge of the King's Bench, my Lord Chief Judge of Eng- 
land, yea, an it were my Lord Chancellor himself, to Tyburn 
with him." We will quote but one more passage. " He that 
took the silver basin and ewer for a bribe, thinketh that it will 
never come out. But he may now know that I know it, and I 
know it not alone ; there be more beside me that know it. Oh, 
briber and bribery! He was never a good man that will so 
take bribes. Nor can I believe that he that is a briber will 
be a good justice. It will never be merry in England till we 
have the skins of such. For what needeth bribing where men. 
do their things uprightly 55 " 

This was not the language of a great philosopher who had 
made new discoveries in moral and political science. It was the 
plain talk of a plain man, who sprang from the body of the 
people, who sympathised strongly with their wants and their 
feelings, and who boldly uttered their opinions. It was on 
account of the fearless way in which stout-hearted old Hugh 
exposed the misdeeds of men in ermine tippets and gold collars, 
that the Londoners cheered him, as he walked down the Strand 
to preach at Whitehall, struggled for a touch of his gown,, and 
bawled " Have at them, Father Latimer." It is plain, from 
the passages which we have quoted, and from fifty others which 



80 LORD BACON. 

we might quote, that, long before Bacon was born, the accepting 
of presents by a judge was known to be a wicked and shameful 
act, that the fine words under which it was the fashion to veil 
such corrupt practices were even then seen through by the 
common people, that the distinction on which Mr. Montagu in- 
sists between compliments and bribes was even then laughed at 
as mere colouring. There may be some oratorical exaggeration 
in what Latimer says about the Tyburn tippet and the sign of 
the judge's skin ; but the fact that he ventured to use such ex- 
pressions is amply sufficient to prove that the gift-taking judges, 
the receivers of silver basins and ewers, were regarded as such 
pests of the commonwealth that a venerable divine might, 
without any breach of Christian charit}^, publicly pray to God 
for their detection and their condign punishment. 

Mr. Montagu tells us, most justly, that we ought not to 
transfer the opinions of our age to a former age. But he has him- 
self committed a greater error than that against which he has 
cautioned his readers. Without any evidence, nay, in the face 
of the strongest evidence, he ascribes to the people of a former 
age a set of opinions which no people ever held. But any hy- 
pothesis is in his view more probable than that Bacon should 
have been a dishonest man. We firmly believe that, if papers 
were to be discovered which should irresistibly prove that Bacon 
was concerned in the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, Mr. 
Montagu would tell us that, at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century, it was not thought improper in a man to put arsenic 
into the broth of his friends, and that we ought to blame, not 
Bacon, but the age in which he lived. 

But why should we have recourse to any other evidence, when 
the proceeding against Lord Bacon is itself the best evidence on 
the subject ? When Mr. Montagu tells us that we ought not to 
transfer the opinions of our age to Bacon's age, he appears alto- 
gether to forget that it was by men of Bacon's own age that 
Bacon was prosecuted, tried, convicted, and sentenced. Did 



LOED BACON. 81 

not they know what their own opinions were ? Did not they 
know whether they thought the taking of gifts by a judge a 
crime or not ? Mr. Montagu complains bitterly that Bacon was 
induced to abstain from making a defence. But, if Bacon's 
defence resembled that which is made for him in the volume 
before us, it would have been unnecessary to trouble the Houses 
with it. The Lords and Commons did not want Bacon to tell 
them the thoughts of their own hearts, to inform them that they 
did not consider such practices as those in which they had de- 
tected him as at all culpable. Mr. Montagu's proposition may 
indeed be fairly stated thus : — It was very hard that Bacon's 
contemporaries should think it wrong in him to do what they 
did not think it wrong in him to do. Hard indeed ; and withal 
somewhat improbable. Will any person say that the Commons 
who impeached Bacon for taking presents, and the Lords who 
sentenced him to fine, imprisonment, and degradation for taking 
presents, did not know that the taking of presents was a crime? 
Or will any person say that Bacon did not know what the whole 
House of Commons and the whole House of Lords knew ? 
Nobody who is not prepared to maintain one of these absurd 
propositions can deny that Bacon committed what he knew to 
be a crime. 

It cannot be pretended that the Houses were seeking occasion 
to ruin Bacon, and that they therefore brought him to punish- 
ment on charges which they themselves knew to be frivolous. 
In no quarter was there the faintest indication of a disposition 
to treat him harshly. Through the whole proceeding there was 
no symptom of personal animosity or of factious violence in either 
House. Indeed, we will venture to say that no State-Trial in 
our history is more creditable to all who took part in it, either 
as prosecutors or judges. The decency, the gravity, the public 
spirit, the justice moderated but not unnerved by compassion, 
which appeared in every part of the transaction, would do honour 
to the most respectable public men of our own times. The 

F 



82 LORD BACON. 

accusers, while they discharged their duty to their constituents 
by bringing the misdeeds of the Chancellor to light, spoke with 
admiration of his many eminent qualities. The Lords, while 
condemning him, complimented him on the ingenuousness of 
his confession, and spared him the humiliation of a public 
appearance at their bar. So strong was the contagion of good 
feeling that even Sir Edward Coke, for the first time in his 
life, behaved like a gentleman. No criminal ever had more tem- 
perate prosecutors than Bacon. No criminal ever had more 
favourable judges. If he was convicted, it was because it was 
impossible to acquit him without offering the grossest outrage 
to justice and common sense. 

Mr. Montagu's other argument, namely, that Bacon, though 
he took gifts, did not take bribes, seems to us as futile as that 
which we have considered. Indeed, we might be content to 
leave it to be answered by the plainest man among our readers. 
Demosthenes noticed it with contempt more than two thousand 
years ago. Latimer, we have seen, treated this sophistry with 
similar disdain. "Leave colouring," said he, "and call these 
things by their Christian name, — bribes." Mr. Montagu at- 
tempts, somewhat unfairly, we must say, to represent the pre- 
sents which Bacon received as similar to the perquisites which 
suitors paid to the members of the Parliaments of France. The 
French magistrate had a legal right to his fee ; and the amount 
of the fee was regulated by law. Whether this be a good mode 
of remunerating judges is not the question. But what analogy 
is there between payments of this sort and the presents which 
Bacon received, presents which were not sanctioned by the law, 
which were not made under- the public eye, and of which the 
amount was regulated only by private bargain between the 
magistrate and the suitor ? 

Again, it is mere trifling to say that Bacon could not have 
meant to act corruptly, because he employed the agency of men 
of rank, of bishops, privy councillors, and members of Parlia- 



LORD BACON. 83 

ment ; as if the whole history of that generation was not full of 
the low actions of high people ; as if it was not notorious that 
men, as exalted in rank as any of the decoys that Bacon 
employed, had pimped for Somerset and poisoned Overbury. 

But, says Mr. Montagu, these presents "were made openly 
and with the greatest publicity." This would indeed be a strong 
argument in favour of Bacon. But we deny the fact. In one, 
and one only, of the cases in which Bacon was accused of cor- 
ruptly receiving gifts, does he appear to have received a gift 
publicly. This was in a matter depending between the Company 
of Apothecaries and the Company of Grocers. Bacon, in his 
Confession, insisted strongly on the circumstance that he had 
on this occasion taken a present publicly, as a proof that he 
had not taken it corruptly. Is it not clear that, if he had taken 
the presents mentioned in the other charges in the same public 
manner, he would have dwelt on this point in his answer to 
those charges ! The fact that he insists so strongly on the 
publicity of one particular present is of itself sufficient to prove 
that the other presents were not publicly taken. Why he took 
this present publicly and the rest secretly, is evident. He on 
that occasion acted openly, because he was acting honestly. 
He was not on that occasion sitting judicial^. He was called 
in to effect an amicable arrangement between two parties. Both 
were satisfied with his decision. Both joined in making him ;l 
present in return for his trouble. Whether it was quite delicate 
in a man of his rank to accept a present under such circum- 
stances, maybe questioned. But there is no ground in this easy 
for accusing him of corruption. 

Unhappily, the very circumstances which prove him to have 
been innocent in this case prove him to have been guilty on the 
other charges. Once, and once only, he alleges that he received 
a present publicly. The natural inference is that in all the 
other cases mentioned in the articles against him he received 
presents seci-etly. When we examine the single case in which 

F 2 



84 LORD BACON. 

he alleges that he received a present publicly, we find that it 
is also the single case in which there was no gross impropriety 
in his receiving a present. Is it then possible to doubt that his 
reason for not receiving other presents in as public a manner 
was that he knew that it was wrong to receive them ? 

One argument still remains, plausible in appearance, but ad- 
mitting of easy and complete refutation. The two chief com- 
plainants, Aubrey and Egerton, had both made presents to the 
Chancellor. But he had decided against them both. Therefore 
he had not received those presents as bribes. " The complaints 
of his accusers were," says Mr. Montagu, "not that the gra- 
tuities had, but that they had not influenced Bacon's judgment, 
as he had decided against them." 

The truth is, that it is precisely in this way that an extensive 
system of corruption is generally detected. A person who, by 
a bribe, has procured a decree in his favour, is by no means 
likely to come forward of his own accord as an accuser. He is 
content. He has his quid pro quo. He is not impelled either 
by interested or by vindictive motives to bring the transaction 
before the public. On the contrary, he has almost as strong 
motives for holding his tongue as the judge himself can have. 
But when a judge practises corruption, as we fear that Bacon 
practised it, on a large scale, and has many agents looking out 
in different quarters for prey, it will sometimes happen that he 
will be bribed on both sides. It will sometimes happen that he 
will receive money from suitors who are so obviously in the 
wrong that he cannot with decency do any thing to serve them. 
Thus he will now and then be forced to pronounce against 
a person from whom he has received a present ; and he makes 
that person a deadly enemy. The hundreds who have got what 
they paid for remain quiet. It is the two or three who have 
paid, and have nothing to show for their money, who are noisy. 

The memorable case of the Goezmans is an example of this. 
Beaumarchais had an important suit depending before the 



LORD BACON. 85 

Parliament of Paris. M. Goezman was the judge on whom 
chiefly the decision depended. It was hinted to Beaumarchais 
that Madame Goezman might be propitiated by a present. 
He accordingly offered a purse of gold to the lady, who 
received it graciously. There can be no doubt that, if the 
decision of the court had been favourable to him, these things 
would never have been known to the world. But he lost his 
cause. Almost the whole sum which he had expended in 
bribery was immediately refunded ; and those who had dis- 
appointed him probably thought that he would not, for the 
mere gratification of his malevolence, make public a transaction 
which was discreditable to himself as well as to them. They 
knew little of him. He soon taught them to curse the day in 
which they had dared to trifle with a man of so revengeful and 
turbulent a spirit, of such dauntless effrontery, and of such 
eminent talents for controversy and satire. He compelled the 
Parliament to put a degrading stigma on M. Goezman. He 
drove Madame Goezman to a convent. Till it was too late to 
pause, his excited passions did not suffer him to remember that 
he could effect their ruin only by disclosures ruinous to himself. 
We could give other instances. But it is needless. No person 
well acquainted with human nature can fail to perceive that, if 
the doctrine for which Mr. Montagu contends were admitted, 
society would be deprived of almost the only chance which it 
has of detecting the corrupt practices of judges. 

We return to our narrative. The sentence of Bacon had 
scarcely been pronounced when it was mitigated. He was 
indeed sent to the Tower. But this was merely a form. In 
two days he was set at liberty, and soon after he retired to 
Gorhambury. His fine was speedily released by the Crown. 
He was next suffered to present himself at Court ; and at length, 
in 1624, the rest of his punishment was remitted. He was 
now at liberty to resume his seat in the House of Lords, and he 
was actually summoned to the next Parliament. But age, 



86 LORD BACON. 

infirmity, and perhaps shame, prevented him from attending. 
The Government allowed him a pension of twelve hundred 
pounds a year ; and his whole annual income is estimated by 
Mr. Montagu at two thousand five hundred pounds, a sum which 
was probably above the average income of a nobleman of that 
generation, and which was certainly sufficient for comfort and 
even for splendour. Unhappily, Bacon was fond of display, and 
unused to pay minute attention to domestic aifairs. He was 
not easily persuaded to give up any part of the magnificence to 
which he had been accustomed in the time of his power and 
prosperity. No pressure of distress could induce him to part 
with the woods of Gorhambury. " I will not," he said, " be 
stripped of my feathers." He travelled with so splendid an 
equipage and so large a retinue that Prince Charles, who once 
fell in with him on the road, exclaimed with surprise, " Well ; 
do what we can, this man scorns to go out in snuff." This 
carelessness and ostentation reduced Bacon to frequent distress. 
He was under the necessity of parting with York House, and of 
taking up his residence, during his visits to London, at his old 
chambers in Gray's Inn. He had other vexations, the exact 
nature of which is unknown. It is evident from his will that 
some part of his wife's conduct had greatly disturbed and 
irritated him. 

But, whatever might be his pecuniary difficulties or his 
conjugal discomforts, the powers of his intellect still remained 
undiminished. Those noble studies for which he had found 
leisure in the midst of professional drudgery and of courtly 
intrigues gave to this last sad stage of his life a dignity beyond 
what power or titles could bestow. Impeached, convicted, 
sentenced, driven with ignominy from the presence of his 
Sovereign, shut out from the deliberations of his fellow nobles, 
loaded with debt, branded with dishonour, sinking under the 
weight of years, sorrows, and diseases, Bacon was Bacon still. 
' : My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson very finely, 



LORD BACON. 87 

" was never increased towards him by his place or honours ; but 
I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only 
proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, 
one of the greatest men and most worthy of admiration, that 
had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that 
God would give him strength; for greatness he could not 
want." 

The services which Bacon rendered to letters during the last 
five years of his life, amidst ten thousand distractions and 
vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the 
many years which he had wasted, to use the words of Sir 
Thomas Bodley, " on such study as was not worthy of such a 
student." He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England, a 
History of England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, 
a body of Natural History, a Philosophical Romance. He made, 
extensive and valuable additions to his Essays. He published 
the inestimable Treatise De Augmentis Scientiarnm. The 
very trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and 
languor bore the mark of his mind. The best collection of jests 
in the world is that which he dictated from memorj'-, without 
referring to any book, on a day on which illness had rendered 
him incapable of serious study. 

The great apostle of experimental philosophy was destined to 
be its martyr. It had occurred to him that snow might be used 
with advantage for the purpose of preventing animal substances 
from putrefying. On a very cold day, early in the spring of the 
year 1626, he alighted from his coach near Highgate, in order 
to try the experiment. He went into a cottage, bought a fowl, 
and with his own hands stuffed it with snow. While thus 
engaged he felt a sudden chill, and was soon so much indisposed 
that it was impossible for him to return to Gray's Inn. The 
Earl of Arundel, with whom he was well acquainted, had 
a house at Highgate. To that house Bacon was carried. The 
Earl was absent ; but the servants who were in charge of the 

F 4 



88 LORD BACON. 

place showed great respect and attention to the illustrious 
guest. Here, after an illness of about a week, he expired early 
on the morning of Easter-day, 1626. His mind appears to 
have retained its strength and liveliness to the end. He did 
not forget the fowl which had caused his death. In the last 
letter that he ever wrote, with fingers which, as he said, could 
not steadily hold a pen, he did not omit to mention that the 
experiment of the snow had succeeded " excellently well." 

Our opinion of the moral character of this great man has 
already been sufficiently explained. Had his life been passed 
in literary retirement, he would, in all probability, have deserved 
to be considered, not only as a great philosopher, but as a worthy 
and good-natured member of society. But neither his principles 
nor his spirit were such as could be trusted, * when strong 
temptations were to be resisted and serious dangers to be 
braved. 

In his will he expressed with singular brevity, energy, 
dignity, and pathos, a mournful consciousness that his actions 
had not been such as to entitle him to the esteem of those under 
whose observation his life had been passed, and, at the same 
time, a proud confidence that his writings had secured for him 
a high and permanent place among the benefactors of mankind. 
So at least we understand those striking words which have been 
often quoted, but which we must quote once more ; " For my 
name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and 
to foreign nations, and to the next age." 

His confidence was just. From the day of his death his fame 
has been constantly and steadily progressive ; and we have no 
doubt that his name will be named with reverence to the latest 
ages, and to the remotest ends of the civilised world. 

The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to 
have been this, that it aimed at things altogether different from 
those which his predecessors had proposed to themselves. This 
was his own opinion. " Finis scientiarum," says he, " a nemine 



LORD BACON. 89 

adhuo bene positus est."* And again, "Omnium gravissimus 
error in dcviatione ab ultimo doctrinarum fine consistit."f 
" Nee ipsa meta/' says he elsewhere, " adhuc ulli, quod sciarn, 
mortalium posita est et defixa."| The more carefully his works 
are examined, the more cleai'ly, we think, it will appear that 
this is the real clue to his whole system, and that he used means 
different from those used by other philosophers, because he 
wished to arrive at an end altogether different from theirs. 

What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself? 
It was, to use his own emphatic expression, " fruit." It was 
the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of 
human sufferings. It was " the relief of man's estate." § It was 
" commodis humanis inservire." |] It was " efficaciter operari ad 
sublevanda vita3 humanos incommoda."^" It was " dotare vitam 
humanam novis inventis et copiis."*'* It was " genus humanum 
novis operibus et potestatibus continuo dotare." ff This was 
the object of all his speculations in every department of science, 
in natural philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals. 

Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility 
and Progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, 
and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories 
of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never 
could be more than theories ; in attempts to solve insoluble 
enigmas ; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable 
frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office 
of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools 
contemned that office as degrading ; some censured it as im- 
moral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the 
age of Cicero and Caasar, so far forgot himself as to enumerate, 
among the humbler blessings which mankind owed to philo- 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 81. f De Augmentis, Lib. 1. 

% Cogitata et visa. § Advancement of Learning, Book 1 

|| Be Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 1. ^ lb., Lib. 2. Cap. 2. 

** Novum Organum, Lib. 1 . Aph. 81. ff Cogitata et visa. 



90 LOKD BACON. 

sophy, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the intro- 
duction of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as 
an affront, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca 
vehemently disclaims these insulting compliments.* Philosophy, 
according to him, has nothing to do with teaching men to rear 
arched roofs over their heads. The true philosopher does not 
care whether he has an arched roof or any roof. Philosophy 
has nothing to do with teaching men the uses of metals. She 
teaches us to be independent of all material substances, of all 
mechanical contrivances. The wise man lives according to 
nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physical comforts 
of his species, he regrets that his lot was not cast in that golden 
age when the human race had no protection against the cold 
but the skins of wild beasts, no screen from the sun but a 
cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention 
or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill, is an insult. 
" In my own time," says Seneca, " there have been inventions 
of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth 
equally through all parts of a building, short-hand, which has 
been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace 
with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things 
is drudgery for the lowest slaves ; philosophy lies deeper. It is 
not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object 
of her lessons is to form the soul. Non est, inquam, instrumen- 
torum ad usus necessarios opifex." If the non were left out 
this last sentence would be no bad description of the Baconian 
philosophy, and would, indeed, very much resemble several ex- 
pressions in the Novum Organum. " We shall next be told," 
exclaims Seneca, " that the first shoemaker was a philosopher." 
For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between 
the first shoemaker, and the author of the three books On 
Anger, we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to 
be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from 
* Seneca, Epist. 90. 



LORD BACON. 91 

being wet ; and we doubt wbether Seneca ever kept any body 
from being angry. 

It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess 
that any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to any 
thing that could possibly promote what vulgar people would 
consider as the well-being of mankind. He labours to clear 
Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made th<? 
first arch, and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived 
the potter's wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might 
happen ; and it may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher 
may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philo- 
sopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. No, 
to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in 
praise of poverty with two millions sterling out at usury, to 
meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury, in 
gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns, to rant about 
liberty, while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedmen 
of a tyrant, to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the 
same pen which had just before written a defence of the murder 
of a mother by a son. 

From the cant of this philosophy, a philosophy meanly proud 
of its own unprofitableness, it is delightful to turn to the lessons 
of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the 
faults of Bacon's life when we read that singularly graceful and 
dignified passage: "Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est, 
loquar, et in iis quae nunc edo, et in iis quae in posterum 
meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, saepius 
sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam ; 
quique architectus fortasse in philosophia et scientiis esse 
debeam, etiam operarius, et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio, cum 
haud pauca quae omnino fieri necesse sit, alii autem ob innatam 
superbiam subterfugiant, ipse sustineam et exsequar."* This 
philanthropia, which, as he said in one of his most remarkable 
* De Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 1. 



92 LORD BACOK. 

of his early letters, " was so fixed in his mind, as it could not 
be removed," this majestic humility, this persuasion that nothing 
can he too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which is 
not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the meanest, is 
the great characteristic distinction, the essential spirit of the 
Baconian philosophy. We trace it in all that Bacon has written 
on Physics, on Laws, on Morals. And we conceive that from 
this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of this system directly 
and almost necessarily sprang. 

The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which 
we have referred tainted the whole body of the ancient philo- 
sophy from the time of Socrates downwards, and took possession 
of intellects with which that of Seneca cannot for a moment be 
compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be 
distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. 
Bacon has dropped hints from which it may be inferred that, in 
his opinion, the prevalence of this feeling was in a great 
measure to be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our 
great countryman evidently did not consider the revolution 
which Socrates effected in philosophy as a happy event, and 
constantly maintained that the earlier Greek speculators, De- 
mocritus in particular, were, on the whole, superior to their 
more celebrated successors.* 

Assuredly if the tree which Socrates planted and Plato 
watered is to be judged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the 
noblest of trees. But if we take the homely test of Bacon, if 
we judge of the tree by its fruits, our opinion of it may perhaps 
be less favourable. When we sum up all the useful truths 
which we owe to that philosophy, to what do they amount ? 
We find, indeed, abundant proofs that some of those who culti- 
vated it were men of the first order of intellect. We find 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 71. 79. De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. 
De principiis, atque originibus. Cogitata et visa. Redargutio philoso 
phiarum. 



LORD BACON. 93 

among their writings incomparable specimens both of dialectical 
and rhetorical art. We have no doubt that the ancient con- 
troversies were of use, in so far as they served to exercise the 
faculties of the disputants ; for there is no controversy so idle 
that it may not be of use in this way. But, when we look for 
something more, for something which adds to the comforts or 
alleviates the calamities of the human race, we are forced to 
own ourselves disappointed. We are forced to say with Bacon 
that this celebrated philosophy ended in nothing but dispu- 
tation, that it was neither a vineyard nor an olive-ground, but 
an intricate wood of briers and thistles, from which those who 
lost themselves in it brought back many scratches and no food.* 
We readily acknowledge that some of the teachers of this 
unfruitful wisdom were among the greatest men that the world 
has ever seen. If we admit the justice of Bacon's censure, we 
admit it with regret, similar to that which Dante felt when he 
learned the fate of those illustrious heathens who were doomed 
to the first circle of Hell. 

" Gran duol mi prese al cuor quando lo 'ntesi, 
Perocche gente di molto valore 
Conobbi che 'n quel limbo eran sospesi." 

But in truth the very admiration which we feel for the eminent 
philosophers of antiquity forces us to adopt the opinion that 
their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else 
could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind ? 
A pedestrian may show as much muscular vigour on a treadmill 
as on the highway road. But on the road his vigour will 
assuredly carry him forward ; and on the treadmill, he will not 
advance an inch. The ancient philosophy was a treadmill, not 
a path. It was made up of revolving questions, of controversies 
which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for 
having much exertion and no progress. We must acknowledge 
that more than once, while contemplating the doctrines of the 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 73. 



94 LORD BACON. 

Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transpa- 
rent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been 
tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, " Cur 
quis non prandeat, hoc est?" "What is the highest good, whe 
ther pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can 
be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are 
certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether 
all departures from right be equally reprehensible, these, and 
other questions of the same sort, occupied the brains, the tongues, 
and the pens of the ablest men in the civilised world during 
several centuries. This sort of philosophy, it is evident, could 
not be progressive. It might indeed sharpen and invigorate 
the minds of those who devoted themselves to it ; and so might 
the disputes of the orthodox Lilliputians and the heretical 
Blefuscudians about the big ends and the little ends of eggs. 
But such disputes could add nothing to the stock of knowledge. 
The human mind accordingly, instead of marching, merely 
marked time. It took as much trouble as would have sufficed 
to carry it forward ; and yet remained on the same spot. There 
was no accumulation of truth, no heritage of truth acquired by 
the labour of one generation and bequeathed to another, to be 
again transmitted with large additions to a third. Where this 
philosophy was in the time of Cicero, there it continued to be 
in the time of Seneca, and there it continued to be in the time 
of Favorinus. The same sects were still battling, with the same 
unsatisfactory arguments, about the same interminable ques- 
tions. There had been no want of ingenuity, of zeal, of in- 
dustry. Every trace of intellectual cultivation was there, 
except a harvest. There had been plenty of ploughing, har- 
rowing, reaping, threshing. But the garners contained only 
smut and stubble. 

The ancient philosophers did not neglect natural science ; 
but they did not cultivate it for the purpose of increasing the 
power and ameliorating the condition of man. The taint of 



LORD BACON. 95 

barrenness had spread from ethical to physical speculations. 
Seneca wrote largely on natural philosophy, and magnified the 
importance of that study. But why ? Not because it tended 
to assuage suffering, to multiply the conveniences of life, to ex- 
tend the empire of man over the material world ; but solely 
because it tended to raise the mind above low cares, to separate 
it from the body, to exercise its subtilty in the solution of very 
obscure questions."* Thus natural philosophy was considered 
in the light merely of a mental exercise. It was made sub- 
sidiary to the art of disputation; and it consequently proved 
altogether barren of useful discoveries. 

There was one sect which, however absurd and pernicious 
some of its doctrines may have been, ought, it should seem, to 
have merited an exception from the general censure which 
Bacon has pronounced on the ancient schools of wisdom. The 
Epicurean, who referred all happiness to bodily pleasure, and 
all evil to bodily pain, might have been expected to exert him- 
self for the purpose of bettering his own physical condition and 
that of his neighbours. But the thought seems never to have 
occurred to any member of that school. Indeed their notion, 
as reported by their great poet, was, that no more improvements 
were to be expected in the arts which conduce to the comfort 
of life. 

" Ad victum qua; flagitat usus 
Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata." 

This contented despondency, this disposition to admire what 
has been done, and to expect that nothing more will be done, 
is strongly characteristic of all the schools which preceded the 
school of Fruit and Progress. Widely as the Epicurean and 
the Stoic differed on most points, they seem to have quite agreed 
in their attempt for pursuits so vulgar as to be useful. The 
philosophy of both was a garrulous, declaiming, canting, wrang- 

* Seneca, Nat. Quasi, prcef. Lib. 3 



96 LORD BACON. 

ling philosophy. Century after century they continued to 
repeat their hostile war-cries, Virtue and Pleasure ; and in the 
end it appeared that the Epicurean had added as little to the 
quantity of pleasure as the Stoic to the quantity of virtue. It 
is on the pedestal of Bacon, not on that of Epicurus, that those 
noble lines ought to be inscribed : 

" O tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen 
Qui primus potuisti, illustrans commoda vitas." 

In the fifth century Christianity had conquered Paganism, 
and Paganism had infected Christianity. The Church was now 
victorious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had passed 
into her worship, the subtilties of the Academy into her creed. 
In an evil day, though with great pomp and solemnity, — we 
quote the language of Bacon, — was the ill-starred alliance 
stricken between the old philosophy and the new faith.* Ques- 
tions widely different from those which had employed the inge- 
nuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as subtle, just as inter- 
minable, and just as unprofitable, exercised the minds of the 
lively and voluble Greeks. When learning began to revive in 
the West, similar trifles occupied the sharp and vigorous intel- 
lects of the Schoolmen. There was another sowing of the wind, 
and another reaping of the whirlwind. The great work of im- 
proving the condition of the human race was still considered as 
unworthy of a man of learning. Those who undertook that 
task, if what they effected could be readily comprehended, were 
despised as mechanics ; if not, they were in danger of being 
burned as conjurors. 

There cannot be a stronger proof of the degree in which the 
human mind had been misdirected than the history of the two 
greatest events which took place during the middle ages. We 
speak of the invention of Gunpowder and of the invention of 
Printing. The dates of both are unknown. The authors of 
both are unknown. Nor was this because men were too rude 
* Cogitata et visa. 



LOUD BACON. 97 

and ignorant to value intellectual superiority. The inventor of 
gunpowder appears to have been contemporary with Petrarch 
and Boccaccio. The inventor of printing was certainly con- 
temporary with Nicholas the Fifth, with Cosmo de' Medici, 
and with a crowd of distinguished scholars. But the human 
mind still retained that fatal bent which it had received two 
thousand years earlier. George of Trebisond and Marsilio 
Ficino would not easily have been brought to believe that the 
inventor of the printing-press had done more for mankind than 
themselves, or than those ancient writers of whom they were 
the enthusiastic votaries. 

At length the time arrived when the barren philosophy 
which had, during so many ages, employed the faculties of the 
ablest of men, was destined to fall. It had worn many shapes. 
It had mingled itself with many creeds. It had survived revo- 
lutions in which empires, religions, languages, races, had pe- 
rished. Driven from its ancient haunts, it had taken sanctuary 
in that Church which it had persecuted, and had, like the daring 
fiends of the poet, placed its seat 

" next the seat of God, 
And with its darkness dared affront his light." 

Words, and more words, and nothing but words, had been all 
the fruit of all the toil of all the most renowned sages of sixty 
generations. But the days of this sterile exuberance were 
numbered. 

Many causes predisposed the public mind to a change. The 
study of a great variety of ancient writers, though it did not 
give a right direction to philosophical research, did much to- 
wards destroying that blind reverence for authority which had 
prevailed when Aristotle ruled alone. The rise of the Floren- 
tine sect of Platonists, a sect to which belonged some of the 
finest minds of the fifteenth century, was not an unimportant 
event. The mere substitution of the Academic for the Peripa- 

G 



98 LORD BACON. 

tetic philosophy would indeed have done little good. But any 
thing was better than the old habit of unreasoning servility. It 
was something to have a choice of tyrants. " A spark of free- 
dom," as Gibbon has justly remarked, "was produced by this 
collision of adverse servitude." 

Other, causes might be mentioned. But it is chiefly to the 
great reformation of religion that we owe the great reformation 
of philosophy. The alliance between the Schools and the 
Vatican had for ages been so close that those who threw off the 
dominion of the Vatican could not continue to recognise the 
authority of the Schools. Most of the chiefs of the schism 
treated the Peripatetic philosophy with contempt, and spoke of 
Aristotle as if Aristotle had been answerable for all the dogmas 
of Thomas Aquinas. " Nullo apud Lutheranos philosophiam 
esse in pretio," was a reproach which the defenders of the 
Church of Rome loudly repeated, and which many of the Pro- 
testant leaders considered as a compliment. Scarcely any text 
was more frequently cited by the reformers than that in which 
St. Paul cautions the Colossians not to let any man spoil them 
by philosophy. Luther, almost at the outset of his career, went 
so far as to declare that no man could be at once a proficient in 
the school of Aristotle and in that of Christ. Zwingle, Bucer, 
Peter Martyr, Calvin, held similar language. In some of the 
Scotch universities, the Aristotelian system was discarded for 
that of Ramus. Thus, before the birth of Bacon, the empire of 
the scholastic philosophy had been shaken to its foundations 
There was in the intellectual world an anarchy resembling that 
which in the political world often follows the overthrow of an 
old and deeply rooted government. Antiquity, prescription, 
the sound of great names, had ceased to awe mankind. The 
dynasty which had reigned for ages was at an end ; and the 
vacant throne was left to be struggled for by pretenders. 

The first effect of this great revolution was, as Bacon most 



LORD BACON. 99 

justly observed*, to give for a time an undue importance to the 
mere graces of style. The new breed of scholars, the Aschams 
and Buchanans, nourished with the finest compositions of the 
Augustan age, regarded with loathing the dry, crabbed, and 
barbarous diction of respondents and opponents. They were 
far less studious about the matter of their writing than about 
the manner. They succeeded in reforming Latinity ; but they 
never even aspired to effect a reform in philosophy. 

At this time Bacon appeared. It is altogether incorrect to 
say, as has often been said, that he was the first man who rose 
up against the Aristotelian philosophy when in the height of its 
power. The authority of that philosophy had, as we have 
shown, received a fatal blow long before he was born. Several 
speculators, among whom Ramus is the best known, had re- 
cently attempted to form new sects. Bacon's own expressions 
about the state of public opinion in the time of Luther are clear 
and strong : " Accedebat," says he, " odium et contemptus, illis 
ipsis temporibus ortus erga Scholasticos." And again, " Scho- 
lasticorum doctrina despectui prorsus haberi ccepit tanquam 
aspera et barbara."t The part which Bacon played in this 
great change was the part, not of Robespierre, but of Bona- 
parte. The ancient order of things had been subverted. Some 
bigots still cherished with devoted loyalty the remembrance of 
the fallen monarchy, and exerted themselves to effect a restora- 
tion. But the majority had no such feeling. Freed, yet not 
knowing how to use their freedom, they pursued no determinate 
course, and had found no leader capable of conducting them. 

That leader at length arose. The philosophy which he taught 
was essentially new. It differed from that of the celebrated 
ancient teachers, not merely in method, but also in object. Its 
object was the good of mankind, in the sense in which the mass 
of mankind always have understood and always will understand 

* De Augmentis, Lib. 1. 

t Both these passages are in the first book of the De Augmentis. 
G 2 



100 LORD BACON. 

the word good. " Meditor," said Bacon, " instaurationem phi 
losophias ejusmodi quae nihil inanis aut abstracti habeat, quaeque 
vita? humanas conditiones in melius provehat."* 

The difference between the philosophy of Bacon and that of 
his predecessors cannot, we think, be better illustrated than by 
comparing his views on some important subjects with those of 
Plato. We select Plato, because we conceive that he did more 
than any other person towards giving to the minds of speculative 
men that bent which they retained till they received from 
Bacon a new impulse in a diametrically opposite direction. 

It is curious to observe how differently these great men esti- 
mated the value of every kind of knowledge. Take Arithmetic 
for example. Plato, after speaking slightly of the convenience 
of being able to reckon and compute in the ordinary transactions 
of life, passes to what he considers as a far more important 
advantage. The study of the properties of numbers, he tells 
us, habituates the mind to the contemplation of pure truth, and 
raises us above the material universe. He would have his dis- 
ciples apply themselves to this study, not that they may be able 
to buy or sell, not that they may qualify themselves to be shop- 
keepers or travelling merchants, but that they may learn to 
withdraw their minds from the ever-shifting spectacle of this 
visible and tangible world, and to fix them on the immutable 
essences of things.f 

Bacon, on the other hand, valued this branch of knowledge, 
only on account of its uses with reference to that visible and 
tangible world which Plato so much despised. He speaks with 
scorn of the mystical arithmetic of the later Platonists, and 
laments the propensity of mankind to employ, on mere matters 
of curiosity, powers the whole exertion of which is required for 
purposes of solid advantage. He advises arithmeticians to 
leave these trifles, and to employ themselves in framing conve- 
nient expressions, which may be of use in physical researches.^ 

* Redargutio Phihsophiarum. f Plato's Republic. Book 7. 

% De Augmenlis, Lib. 3. Cap. 6. 



LORD BACON. 101 

The same reasons which led Plato to recommend the study 
of arithmetic led him to recommend also the study of mathe- 
matics. The vulgar crowd of geometricians, he says, will not 
understand him. They have practice always in view. They 
do not know that the real use of the science is to lead men to 
the knowledge of abstract, essential, eternal truth.* Indeed, if 
we are to believe Plutarch, Plato carried this feeling so far 
that he considered geometry as degraded by being applied to 
any purpose of vulgar utility. Archytas, it seems, had framed 
machines of extraordinary power on mathematical principles.^ 
Plato remonstrated with his friend, and declared that this was 
to degrade a noble intellectual exercise into a low craft, fit 
only for carpenters and wheelwrights. The office of geometry, 
he said, was to discipline the mind, not to minister to the base 
wants of the body. His interference was successful ; and from 
that time, according to Plutarch, the science of mechanics was 
considered as unworthy of the attention of a philosopher. 

Archimedes in a later age imitated and surpassed Archytas. 
But even Archimedes was not free from the prevailing notion 
that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce any 
thing useful. It was with difficulty that he was induced to 
stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of 
those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and 
always spoke of them slightingly as mere amusements, as trifles 
in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind 
after intense application to the higher parts of his science. 

The opinion of Ba-jon on this subject was diametrically 
opposed to that of the ancient philosophers. He valued geo- 
metry chiefly, if not solely, on account of those uses, which to 
Plato appeared so base. And it is remarkable that the longer 

* Plato's Republic, Book 7. 

f Plutarch, Sympos. viii. and Life of Marcellus. The machines of Ar- 
chytas are also mentioned by Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laertius. 

o a 



102 LORD BACON. 

Bacon lived the stronger this feeling became. When in 1605 
he wrote the two books on the Advancement of Learning, he 
dwelt on the advantages which mankind derived from mixed 
mathematics ; but he at the same time admitted that the bene- 
ficial effect produced by mathematical study on the intellect, 
though a collateral advantage, was " no less worthy than that 
which was principal and intended." But it is evident that his 
views underwent a change. When, near twenty years later, he 
published the De Augmentis, which is the Treatise on the 
Advancement of Learning, greatly expanded and carefully 
corrected, he made important alterations in the part which 
related to mathematics. He condemned with severity the high 
pretensions of the mathematicians, " delicias et fastum inathe- 
maticorum." Assuming the well-being of the human race to 
be the end of knowledge *, he pronounced that mathematical 
science could claim no higher rank than that of an appendage 
or an auxiliary to other sciences. Mathematical science, he 
says, is the handmaid of natural philosophy ; she ought to 
demean herself as such ; and he declares that he cannot conceive 
by what ill chance it has happened that she presumes to claim 
precedence over her mistress. He predicts — a prediction 
which would have made Plato shudder — that as more and 
more discoveries are made in physics, there will be more and 
more branches of mixed mathematics. Of that collateral advan- 
tage the value of which, twenty years before, he rated so highly, 
he says not one word. This omission cannot have been the 
effect of mere inadvertence. His own treatise was before him. 
From that treatise he deliberately expunged whatever was 
favourable to the study of pure mathematics, and inserted 
several keen reflections on the ardent votaries of that study. 
This fact, in our opinion, admits of only one explanation. 
Bacon's love of those pursuits which directly tend to improve 
the condition of mankind, and his jealousy of all pursuits 
* Usui et commodis hominum consulimus. 



LORD BACON. 103 

merely curious, had grown upon him, and had, it may be, 
become immoderate. He was afraid of using any expression 
which might have the effect of inducing any man of talents to 
employ in speculations, useful only to the mind of the specu- 
lator, a single hour which might be employed in extending the 
empire of man over matter.* If Bacon erred here, we must 
acknowledge that we greatly prefer his error to the opposite 
error of Plato. We have no patience with a philosophy which, 
like those Roman matrons who swallowed abortives in order to 
preserve their shapes, takes pains to be barren for fear of being 
homely. 

Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences 
which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons 
far removed from common habits of thinking. " Shall we 
set down astronomy," says Socrates, "among the subjects of 
study ? " f "I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon : 
"to know something about the seasons, the months, and the 
years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture 
and navigation." " It amuses me," says Socrates, " to see how 
afraid you are, lest the common herd of people should accuse 
you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds, in 
that pure and magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter 
would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain, that the use of 
astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to 
assist in raising the mind to the contemplation of things which 
are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The know- 
ledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates 
considers as of little value. The appearances which make the 
sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, likes the figures which a 
geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to 
feeble minds. We must get beyond them ; we must neglect 

* Compare the passage relating to mathematics in the Second Book of 
the Advancement of Learning, with the De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 6. 
f Plato's Republic, Book 7. 



104 LOED BACON. 

them ; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent 
of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the 
lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very 
nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to 
the ox of Prometheus *, a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with 
rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He 
complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been se- 
parated from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the 
noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. 
The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, 
of a living astronomy |, of an astronomy which should set forth 
the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly 
bodies, as they really are.| 

On the greatest and most useful of all human inventions, the 
invention of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much 
complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters 
had operated on the human mind as the use of the go-cart in 
learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to 
operate on the human body. It was a support which, in his 
opinion, soon became indispensable to those who used it, which 
made vigorous exertion first unnecessary, and then impossible. 
The powers of the intellect would, he conceived, have been 
more fully developed without this delusive aid. Men would 
have been compelled to exercise the understanding and the 
memory, and, by deep and assiduous meditation, to make truth 
thoroughly their own. Now, on the contrary, much knowledge 
is traced on paper, but little is engraved in the soul. A man is 
certain that he can find information at a moment's notice when 
he wants it. He therefore suffers it to fade from his mind. 

* De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. 
f Astronomia viva. 

% " Qitee substantiam et motum et influxum coelestium, prout re vera sunt, 
proponat." Compare this language with Plato's, " ra 5' iv rep ovpavu idao- 



LORD BACON. 105 

Such a man cannot in strictness be said to know any thing. 
He has the show without the reality of wisdom. These opinions 
Plato has put into the mouth of an ancient king of Egypt.* 
But it is evident from the context that they were his own ; and 
so they were understood to be by Quinctilian.f Indeed they 
are in perfect accordance with the whole Platonic system. 

Bacon's views, as may easily be supposed, were widely dif- 
ferent.| The powers of the memory, he observes, without the 
help of writing, can do little towards the advancement of any 
useful science. He acknowledges that the memory may be dis- 
ciplined to such a point as to be able to perform very extraor- 
dinary feats. But on such feats he sets little value. The 
habits of his mind, he tells us, are such that he is not disposed 
to rate highly any accomplishment, however rare, which is of 
no practical use to mankind. As to these prodigious achieve- 
ments of the memory, he ranks them with the exhibitions of 
rope-dancers and tumblers. " The two performances," he says, 
" are of much the same sort. The one is an abuse of the 
powers of the body ; the other is an abuse of the powers of the 
mind. Both may perhaps excite our wonder ; but neither is 
entitled to our respect." 

To Plato, the science of medicine appeared to be of very dis- 
putable advantage.§ He did not indeed object to quick cures 
for acute disorders, or For injuries produced by accidents. But 
the art which resists the slow sap of a chronic disease, which 
repairs frames enervated by lust, swollen by gluttony, or in- 
flamed by wine, which encourages sensuality by mitigating the 
natural punishment of the sensualist, and prolongs existence 
when the intellect has ceased to retain its entire energy, had no 
share of his esteem. A life protracted by medical skill he pro- 
nounced to be a long death. The exercise of the art of medi- 
cine ought, he said, to be tolerated, so far as that art may serve 

* Plato's Phcedrus. f Quinctilian, XI. 

J De Augmentis, Lib. 5. Cap. 5. § Plato's Republic, Book 3. 



106 LORD BACON. 

to cure the occasional distempers of men whose constitutions 
are good. As to those who have bad constitutions, let them 
die ; and the sooner the better. Such men are unfit for war, 
for magistracy, for the management of their domestic affairs, 
for severe study and speculation. If they engage in any vigor- 
ous mental exercise, they are troubled with giddiness and ful- 
ness of the head, all which they lay to the account of philosophy. 
The best thing that can happen to such wretches is to have 
done with life at once. He quotes mythical authority in sup- 
port of this doctrine : and reminds his disciples that the prac- 
tice of the sons of iEsculapius, as described by Homer, ex- 
tended only to the cure of external injuries. 

Far different was the philosophy of Bacon. Of all the 
sciences, that which he seems to have regarded with the greatest 
interest was the science which, in Plato's opinion, would not be 
tolerated in a well regulated community. To make men perfect 
was no part of Bacon's plan. His humble aim was to make 
imperfect men comfortable. The beneficence of his philosophy 
resembled the beneficence of the common Father, whose sun 
rises on the evil and the good, whose rain descends for the just 
and the unjust. In Plato's opinion man was made for philo- 
sophy : in Bacon's opinion philosophy was made for man ; it 
was a means to an end ; and that end was to increase the 
pleasures and to mitigate the pains of millions who are not and 
cannot be philosophers. That a valetudinarian who took great 
pleasure in being wheeled along his terrace, who relished his 
boiled chicken and his weak wine and water, and who enjoyed 
a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre's tales, should be 
treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the 
Timasus without a headache, was a notion which the humane 
spirit of the English school of wisdom altogether rejected. 
Bacon would not have thought it beneath the dignity of a 
philosopher to contrive an improved garden chair for such a 
valetudinarian, to devise some way of rendering his medicines 



LORD BACON. 10? 

more palatable, to invent repasts which he might enjoy, and 
pillows on which he might sleep soundly ; and this though there 
might not be the smallest hope that the mind of the poor 
invalid would ever rise to the contemplation of the ideal beau- 
tiful and the ideal good. As Plato had cited the religious 
legends of Greece to justify his contempt for the more recondite 
parts of the art of healing, Bacon vindicated the dignity of that 
art by appealing to the example of Christ, and reminded men 
that the great Physician of the soul did not disdain to be also 
the physician of the body.* 

When we pass from the science of medicine to that of legis- 
lation, we find the same difference between the systems of these 
two great men. Plato, at the commencement of the Dialogue 
on Laws, lays it down as a fundamental principle that the end 
of legislation is to make men virtuous. It is unnecessary to 
point out the extravagant conclusions to which such a propo- 
sition leads. Bacon well knew to how great an extent the 
happiness of every society must depend on the virtue of its 
members ; and he also knew what legislators can and what they 
cannot do for the purpose of promoting virtue. The view 
which he has given of the end of legislation, and of the prin- 
cipal means for the attainment of that end, has always seemed 
to us eminently happy, even among the many very happy pas- 
sages of the same kind with which his works abound. " Finis 
et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quern jussiones et sanc- 
tiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam ut cives feliciter 
degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus 
honesti, armis adversus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio 
adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et ma- 
gistratibus obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes 
fuerint."f The end is the well-being of the people. The 
means are the imparting of moral and religious education ; the 

* De Augmentis, Lib. 4. Cap. 2. 

f De Augmentis, Lib. 8. Cap. 3. Aph. 5. 



108 LORD BACON. 

providing of every thing necessary for defence against foreign 
enemies ; the maintaining of internal order ; the establishing 
of a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under which 
wealth may he rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed. 

Even with respect to the form in which laws ought to be 
drawn, there is a remarkable difference of opinion between the 
Greek and the Englishman. Plato thought a preamble es- 
sential ; Bacon though it mischievous. Each was consistent 
with himself. Plato, considering the moral improvement of the 
people as the end of legislation, justly inferred that a law which 
commanded and threatened, but which neither convinced the 
reason, nor touched the heart, must be a most imperfect law. 
He was not content with deterring from theft a man who still 
continued to be a thief at heart, with restraining a son who 
hated his mother from beating his mother. The only obedience 
on which he set much value was the obedience which an en- 
lightened understanding yields to reason, and which a virtuous 
disposition yields to precepts of virtue. He really seems to have 
believed that, by prefixing to every law an eloquent and pathetic 
exhortation, he should, to a great extent, render penal enact- 
ments superfluous. Bacon entertained no such romantic hopes ; 
and he well knew the practical inconveniences of the course 
which Plato recommended. " Neque nobis," says he, " prologi 
legum qui inepti olim habiti sunt, et leges introducunt dispu- 
tantes non jubentes, utique placerent, si priscos mores ferre 
possemus. . . . Quantum fieri potest prologi evitentur, et lex 
incipiat a jussione."* 

Each of the great men whom we have compared intended to 
illustrate his system by a philosophical romance ; and each left 
his romance imperfect. Had Plato lived to finish the Critias, a 
comparison between that noble fiction and the New Atlantis 
would probably have furnished us with still more striking 
instances than any which we have given. It is amusing to 

* Be Augmentis, Lib. 8, Cap. 3. Aph. 69. 



LOKD BACON. 109 

think with what horror he would have seen such an institution 
as Solomon's House rising in his republic: with what vehe- 
mence he would have ordered the brewhouses, the perfume - 
houses, and the dispensatories to be pulled down ; and with 
what inexorable rigour he would have driven beyond the 
frontier all the Fellows of the College, Merchants of Light and 
Depredators, Lamps and Pioneers. 

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the 
Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of 
the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he 
requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic 
philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of 
the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The 
former aim was noble ; but the latter was attainable. Plato 
drew a good bow ; but, like Acestes in Virgil, he aimed at the 
stars ; and therefore, though there was no want of strength or 
skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed fol- 
lowed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing. 

" Volans liquidis in nubibus arsit arundo, 
Signavitque viam flammis, tenuesque recessit 
Consumta in ■ 



Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, 
and within bow-shot, and hit it in the white. The philosophy 
of Plato began in words and ended in words, noble words 
indeed, words such as were to be expected from the finest of 
human intellects exercising boundless dominion over the finest 
of human languages. The philosophy of Bacon began in 
observations and ended in arts. 

The boast of the ancient philosophers was that their doctrine 
formed the minds of men to a high degree of wisdom and 
virtue. This was indeed the only practical good which the 
most celebrated of those teachers even pretended to effect ; and 
undoubtedly, if they had effected this, they would have deserved 
far higher praise than if they had discovered the most salutary 



110 LOED BACON. 

medicines or constructed the most powerful machines. But 
the truth is that, in those very matters in which alone they 
professed to do any good to mankind, in those very matters 
for the sake of which they neglected all the vulgar interests 
of mankind, they did nothing, or worse than nothing. They 
promised what was impracticable ; they despised what was 
practicable ; they filled the world with long words and long 
beards ; and they left it as wicked and as ignorant as they 
found it. 

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. 
The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent 
promises of impossibilities. The wise man of the Stoics would, 
no doubt, be a grander object than a steam-engine. But there 
are steam-engines. And the wise man of the Stoics is yet 
to be born. A philosophy which should enable a man to feel 
perfectly happy while in agonies of pain would be better than 
a philosophy which assuages pain. But we know that there 
are remedies which will assuage pain ; and we know that 
the ancient sages liked the toothache just as little as their 
neighbours. A philosophy which should extinguish cupidity 
would be better than a philosophy which should devise laws 
for the security of property. But it is possible to make laws 
which shall, to a very great extent, secure property. And we 
do not understand how any motives which the ancient philo- 
sophy furnished could extinguish cupidity. We know indeed 
that the philosophers were no better than other men. From 
the testimony of friends as well as of foes, from the confessions 
of Epictetus and Seneca, as well as from the sneers of Lucian 
and the fierce invectives of Juvenal, it is plain that these 
teachers of virtue had all the vices of their neighbours, with 
the additional vice of hypocrisy. Some people may think the 
object of the Baconian philosophy a low object, but they 
cannot deny that, high or low, it has been attained. They 
cannot deny that every year makes an addition to what Bacon 



LORD BACON. Ill 

called " fruit." They cannot deny that mankind have made,, 
and are making, great and constant progress in the road which 
he pointed out to them. Was there any such progressive 
movement among the ancient philosophers? After they had 
been declaiming eight hundred years, had they made the world 
better than when they began ? Our belief is that, among the 
philosophers themselves, instead of a progressive improvement 
there was a progressive degeneracy. An abject superstition 
which Democritus or Anaxagoras would have rejected with 
scorn added the last disgrace to- the long dotage of the Stoic 
and Platonic schools. Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate 
which are so delightful and interesting in a child shock and 
disgust us in an aged paralytic ; and in the same way, those 
wild and mythological fictions which charm us, when we hear 
them lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed 
sensation of pity and loathing, when mumbled by Greek 
philosophy in its old age. We know that guns, cutlery, spy- 
glasses, clocks, are better in our time than they were in the 
time of our fathers, and were better in the time of our fathers 
than they were in the time of our grandfathers. We might, 
therefore, be inclined to think that, when a philosophy which 
boasted that its object was the elevation and purification of 
the mind, and which for this object neglected the sordid office 
of ministering to the comforts of the body, had flourished in 
the highest honour during many hundreds of years, a vast 
moral amelioration must have taken place. Was it so ? Look 
at the schools of this wisdom four centuries before the Christian 
era and four centuries after that era. Compare the men 
whom those schools formed at those two periods. Compare 
Plato and Libanius. Compare Pericles and Julian. This 
philosophy confessed, nay boasted, that for every end but one 
it was useless. Had it attained that one end ? 

Suppose that Justinian, when he closed the schools of 
Athens, had called on the last few sages who still haunted the 



112 LORD BACON. 

Portico, and lingered round the ancient, plane-trees, to show 
their title to public veneration : suppose that he had said ; 
" A thousand years have elapsed since, in this famous city, 
Socrates posed Protagoras and Hippias ; during those thousand 
years a large proportion of the ablest men of every generation 
has been employed in constant efforts to bring to perfection 
the philosophy which you teach ; that philosophy has been 
munificently patronised by the powerful ; its professors have 
been held in the highest esteem by the public ; it has drawn to 
itself almost all the sap and vigour of the human intellect : 
and what has it effected ? What profitable truth has it taught 
us which we should not equally have known without it ? 
What has it enabled us to do which we should not have been 
equally able to do without it?'' Such questions, we suspect, 
would have puzzled Simplicius and Isidore. Ask a follower 
of Bacon what the new philosophy, as it was called in the 
time of Charles the Second, has effected for mankind, and 
his answer is ready ; " It has lengthened life ; it has mitigated 
pain ; it has extinguished diseases ; it has increased the fertility 
of the soil ; it has given new securities to the mariner ; it has 
furnished new arms to the warrior ; it has spanned great rivers 
and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers ; it 
has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth ; 
it has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day ; it 
has extended the range of the human vision ; it has multiplied 
the power of the human muscles : it has accelerated motion ; it 
has annihilated distance ; it has facilitated intercourse, corre- 
spondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of business; it has 
enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to soar into 
the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of the 
earth, to traverse the land in cars which whirl along without 
horses, and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour 
against the wind. These are but a part of its fruits, and of 
its first fruits. For it is a philosophy which never rests. 



LOED BACON. 113 

which has never attained, which is never perfect. Its law is 
progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal 
to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow." 

Great and various as the powers of Bacon were, he owes 
his wide and durable fame chiefly to this, that all those powers 
received their direction from common sense. His love of the 
vulgar useful, his strong sympathy with the popular notions of 
good and evil, and the openness with which he avowed that sym- 
pathy, are the secret of his influence. There was in his system 
no cant, no illusion. He had no anointing for broken bones, no 
fine theories de Jinibus, no arguments to persuade men out of 
their senses. He knew that men, and philosophers as well as 
other men, do actually love life, health, comfort, honour, security, 
the society of friends, and do actually dislike death, sickness, 
pain, poverty, disgrace, danger, separation from those to whom 
they are attached. He knew that religion, though it often re- 
gulates and moderates these feelings, seldom eradicates them ; 
nor did he think it desirable for mankind that they should be 
eradicated. The plan of eradicating them by conceits like those 
of Seneca, or syllogisms like those of Chrysippus, was too pre- 
posterous to be for a moment entertained by a mind like his. 
He did not understand what wisdom there could be in changing 
names where it was impossible to change things ; in denying 
that blindness, hunger, the gout, the rack, were evils, and calling 
them dTrowporiyfisva ; in refusing to acknowledge that health, 
safety, plenty, were good things, and dubbing them by the name 
of ddta.<popa. In his opinions on all these subjects, he was not 
a Stoic, nor an Epicurean, nor an Academic, but what would 
have been called by Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics a mere 
Idiwrrfc, a mere common man. And it was precisely because he 
was so that his name makes so great an era in the history of the 
world. It was because he dug deep that he was able to pile 
high. It was because, in order to lay his foundations, he went 
down into those parts of human nature which lie low, but which 



114 LORD BACON. 

are not liable to change, that the fabric which he reared has 
risen to so stately an elevation, and stands with such immov- 
able strength. 

We have sometimes thought that an amusing fiction might 
be written, in which a disciple of Epictetus and a disciple of 
Bacon should be introduced as fellow travellers. They come 
to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage, and 
find houses shut up, intercourse suspended, the sick abandoned, 
mothers weeping in terror over their children. The Stoic as- 
sures the dismayed population that there is nothing bad in the 
small-pox, and that to a wise man disease, deformity, death, the 
loss of friends are not evils. The Baconian takes out a lancet 
and begins to vaccinate. They find a body of miners in great 
dismay. An explosion of noisome vapours has just killed many 
of those who were at work ; and the survivors are afraid to ven- 
ture into the cavern. The Stoic assures them that such an acci- 
dent is nothing but a mere dwoTrporiyiJ-tvoy. The Baconian, who 
has no such fine word at his command, contents himself with 
devising a safety-lamp. They find a shipwrecked merchant 
wringing his hands on the shore. His vessel with an inestimable 
cargo has just gone down, and he is reduced in a moment from 
opulence to beggary. The Stoic exhorts him not to seek happi- 
ness in things which lie without himself, and repeats the whole 
chapter of Epictetus 7rpoe tovq t)]v inroplav hehoiKoraQ. The 
Baconian constructs a diving-bell, goes down in it, and returns 
■with the most precious effects from the wreck. It would be 
easy to multiply illustrations of the difference between the phi- 
losophy of thorns and the philosophy of fruit, the philosophy of 
words and the philosophy of works. 

Bacon has been accused of overrating the importance of those 
sciences which minister to the physical well-being of man, and 
of underrating the importance of moral philosophy ; and it can- 
not be denied that persons who read the Novum Organum and 
the De Augmentis, without adverting to the circumstances under 
which those works were written, will find much that may seem 



LORD BACON. 115 

vo countenance the accusation. It is certain, however, that, 
though in practice he often went very wrong, and though, as 
his historical work and his essays prove, he did not hold, even 
in theory, very strict opinions on points of political morality, he 
was far too wise a man not to know how much our well-being 
depends on the regulation of our minds. The world for which 
he wished was not, as some people seem to imagine, a world 
of water-wheels, power-looms, steam-carriages, sensualists, and 
knaves. He would have been as ready as Zeno himself to main- 
tain that no bodily comforts which could be devised by the skill 
and labour of a hundred generations would give happiness to a 
man whose mind was under the tyranny of licentious appetite, 
of envy, of hatred, or of fear. If he sometimes appeared to 
ascribe importance too exclusively to the arts which increase 
the outward comforts of our species, the reason is plain. Those 
arts had been most unduly depreciated. They had been repre- 
sented as unworthy of the attention of a man of liberal educa- 
tion. " Cogitavit," says Bacon of himself, " earn esse opinionem 
sive asstimationem humidam et damnosam, minui nempe majes- 
tatem mentis humanas, si in experiments et rebus particularibus, 
sensui subjectis, et in materia terminatis, diu ac multum ver- 
setur : prassertiru cum hujusmodi res ad inquirendum laboriosas, 
ad meditandum ignobiles, ad discendum asperse, ad practicam 
illiberales, numero infmitae, et subtilitate pusillre videri soleant, 
et ob hujusmodi conditiones, gloria? artium minus sint accom- 
modataa."* This opinion seemed to him "omnia in familia 
humana turbasse." It had undoubtedly caused many arts which 
were of the greatest utility, and which were susceptible of the 
greatest improvements, to be neglected by speculators, and aban- 
doned to joiners, masons, smiths, weavers, apothecaries. It was 

* Cogitata et visa. The expression opiiiio humida may surprise a reader not 
accustomed to Bacon's style. The allusion is to the maxim of Heraclitus the 
obscure ; " Dry light is the best." By dry light, Bacon understood the light 
of the intellect, no: obscured by the mists of passion, interest, or prejudice. 



116 LORD BACON. 

necessary to assert the dignity of those arts, to bring them pro- 
minently forward, to proclaim that, as they have a most serious 
effect on human happiness, they are not unworthy of the atten- 
tion of the highest human intellects. Again, it was by illustra- 
tions drawn from these arts that Bacon could most easily illus- 
trate his principles. It was by improvements effected in these 
arts that the soundness of his principles could be most speedily 
and decisively brought to the test, and made manifest to common 
understandings. He acted like a wise commander who thins 
every other part of his line to strengthen a point where the 
enemy is attacking with peculiar fury, and on the fate of which 
the event of the battle seems likely to depend. In the Novum 
Organum, however, he distinctly and most truly declares that 
his philosophy is no less a Moral than a Natural Philosophy, 
that, though his illustrations are drawn from physical science, 
the principles which those illustrations are intended to explain 
are just as applicable to ethical and political inquiries as to 
inquiries into the nature of heat and vegetation.* 

He frequently treated of moral subjects ; and he brought to 
those subjects that spirit which was the essence of his whole 
system. He has left us many admirable practical observations 
on what he somewhat quaintly called the Georgics of the mind, 
on the mental cultui-e which tends to produce good dispositions. 
Some persons, he said, might accuse him of spending labour on 
a matter so simple that his predecessors had passed it by with 
contempt. He desired such persons to remember that he had 
from the first announced the objects of his search to be not the 
splendid and the surprising, but the useful and the true, not 
the deluding dreams which go forth through the shining portal 
of ivory, but the humbler realities of the gate of horn.f 

True to this principle, he indulged in no rants about the fit- 
ness of things, the all-sufficiency of virtue, and the dignity of 
human nature. He dealt not at all in resounding nothings, 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 127. f De Augmentis, Lib. 7. Cap. 3. 



LORD BACON. 117 

such as those with which Bolingbroke pretended to comfort 
himself in exile, and in which Cicero vainly sought consolation 
after the loss of Tullia. The casuistical subtilties which occu 
pied the attention of the keenest spirits of his age had, it should 
seem, no attractions for him. The doctors whom Escobar after- 
wards compared to the four beasts and the four-and-twenty 
elders in the Apocalypse Bacon dismissed with most contemp- 
tuous brevity. ' ; Inanes plerumque evadunt et futiles."* Nor 
did he ever meddle with those enigmas which have puzzled 
hundreds of generations, and will puzzle hundreds more. He 
said nothing about the grounds of moral obligation, or the free- 
dom of the human will. He had no inclination to employ him- 
self in labours resembling those of the damned in the Grecian 
Tartarus, to spin for ever on the same wheel round the same 
pivot, to gape for ever after the same deluding clusters, to pour 
water for ever into the same bottomless buckets, to pace for ever 
to and fro on the same wearisome path after the same recoiling 
stone. He exhorted his disciples to prosecute researches of a 
very different description, to consider moral science as a prac- 
tical science, a science of which the object was to cure the dis- 
eases and perturbations of the mind, and which could be improved 
only by a method analogous to that which has improved medi- 
cine and surgery. Moral philosophers ought, he said, to set 
themselves vigorously to work for the purpose of discovering 
what are the actual effects produced on the human character by 
particular modes of education, by the indulgence of particular 
habits, by the study of particular books, by society, by emula- 
tion, by imitation. Then we might hope to find out what mode 
of training was most likely to preserve and restore moral health.f 
What he was as a natural philosopher and a moral philosopher, 
that he was also as a theologian. He was, we are convinced, a 
sincere believer in the divine authority of the Christian revela- 

8 * Be Augmcntis, Lib. 7. Cap. 2. f lb., Lib. 7. Cap. 3. 

h S 



118 LORD BACON 

tion. Nothing can be found in his writings, or in any other 
writings, more eloquent and pathetic than some passages which 
were apparently written under the influence of strong devotional 
feeling. He loved to dwell on the power of the Christian reli- 
gion to effect, much that the ancient philosophers could only 
promise. He loved to consider that religion as the bond of 
charity, the curb of evil passions, the consolation of the wretched, 
the support of the timid, the hope of the dying. But contro- 
versies on speculative points of theology seem to have engaged 
scarcely any portion of his attention. In what he wrote on 
Church Government he showed, as far as he dared, a tolerant 
and charitable spirit. He troubled himself not at all about Ho- 
moousians and Komoiousians, Monothelites and Nestorians. 
He lived in an age in which disputes on the most subtle points 
of divinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe, and 
nowhere more than in England. He was placed in the very 
thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod 
of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with 
talk about election, reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet 
we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be 
inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. "While 
the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious philo- 
sophy and a disputatious theology, the Baconian school, like 
Alworthy seated between Square and Thwackum, preserved a 
calm neutrality, half scornful, half benevolent, and, content with 
adding to the sum of practical good, left the war of words to 
those who liked it. 

We have dwelt long on the end of the Baconian philosophy, 
because from this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of that 
philosophy necessarily arose. Indeed, scarcely any person who 
proposed to himself the same end with Bacon could fail to hit 
upon the same means. 

The vulgar notion about Bacon we take to be this, that he 
invented a new method of arriving at truth, which method is 



LORD BACON. 119 

called Induction, and that he detected some fallacy in the syllo- 
gistic reasoning which had been in vogue before his time. This 
notion is about as well-founded as that of the people who, in the 
middle ages, imagined that Virgil was a great conjurer. Many 
who are far too well informed to talk such extravagant nonsense 
entertain what we think incorrect notions as to what Bacon 
really effected in this matter. 

The inductive method has been practised ever since the be- 
ginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly 
practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless 
schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads 
the clown to the conclusion that if he sows barley he shall not 
reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns that a cloudy 
day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, 
is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and 
none from his father. 

Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive 
method ; but it is not true that he was the first person who 
correctly analysed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle 
had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that 
syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery 
of any new principle, had shown that such discoveries must 
be made by induction, and by induction alone, and had given 
the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with 
great perspicuity and precision. 

Again, we are not inclined to ascribe much practical value to 
that analysis of the inductive method which Bacon has given in 
the second book of the Novum Organum. It is indeed an elabo- 
rate and correct analysis. But it is an analysis of that which we 
are all doing from morning to night, and which we continue to do 
even in our dreams. A plain man finds his stomach out of order. 
He never heard Lord Bacon's name. But he proceeds in the 
strictest conformity with the rules laid down in the second book 
of the Novum Organum,, and satisfies himself that minced pies 



120 LORD BACON. 

have done the mischief. " I ate minced pies on Monday and 
Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night." 
This is the comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum convenien- 
tium. " I did not eat any on Tuesday and Friday, and I was 
quite well." This is the comparentia instantiarum in proximo 
quae natura data privantur. " I ate very sparingly of them on 
Sunday, and was very slightly indisposed in the evening. But 
on Christmas day I almost dined on them, and was so ill that I 
was in great danger." This is the comparentia, instantiarum 
secundum magis et minus. " It cannot have been the brandy 
which I took with them. For I have drunk brandy daily for 
years without being the worse for it." This is the rejectio na- 
turarum. Our invalid then proceeds to what is termed by 
Bacon the Vindemiatio, and pronounces that minced pies do not 
agree with him. 

We repeat that we dispute neither the ingenuity nor the ac- 
curacy of the theory contained in the second book of the Novum 
Organum; but we think that Bacon greatly overrated its utility. 
We conceive that the inductive process, like many other pro- 
cesses, is not likely to be better performed merely because men 
know how they perform it. William Tell would not have been 
one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that 
his arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the 
attraction of the earth. Captain Barclay would not have been 
more likely to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, if he 
had known the place and name of every muscle in his legs. 
Monsieur Jourdain probably did not produce D and F more 
correctly after he had been apprised that D is pronounced by 
touching the teeth with the end of the tongue ; and F by putting 
the upper teeth on the lower lip. We cannot perceive that the 
study of Grammar makes the smallest difference in the speech of 
people who have always lived in good society. Not one Londoner 
in ten thousand can lay down the rules for the proper use of 
will and shall. Yet not one Londoner in a million ever mis- 



LORD BACON. 121 

places his will and shall. Doctor Robertson could, undoubtedly, 
have written a luminous dissertation on the use of those words. 
Yet, even in his latest work, he sometimes misplaced them ludi- 
crously. No man uses figures of speech with more propriety 
because he knows that one figure is called a- metonymy and 
another a synecdoche. A drayman in a passion calls out, 
" You are a pretty fellow," without suspecting that he is utter- 
ing irony, and that irony is one of the four primary tropes. 
The old systems of rhetoric were never regarded by the most 
experienced and discerning judges as of any use for the purpose, 
of forming an orator. "Ego banc vim intelligo," said Cicero, 
"esse in prreceptis omnibus, non ut ea secuti oratores eloquen- 
tiae laudem sint adepti, sed qua? sua sponte homines eloquentes 
facerent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse ; sic esse non 
eloquentiam ex artificio, sed artificium ex eloquentia natum." 
"We must own that we entertain the same opinion concerning 
the study of Logic which Cicero entertained concerning the 
study of Rhetoric. A man of sense syllogizes in celarent and 
cesare all day long without suspecting it ; and, though he may 
not know what an ignoratio elenchi is, has no difficulty in ex- 
posing it whenever he falls in with it ; which is likely to be as 
often as he falls in with a Reverend Master of Arts nourished 
on mode and figure in the cloisters of Oxford. Considered 
merely as an intellectual feat, the Organum of Aristotle can 
scarcely be admired too highly. But the more we compare in- 
dividual with individual, school with school, nation with nation, 
generation with generation, the more do we lean to the opinion 
that the knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency 
whatever to make men good reasoners. 

What Aristotle did for the syllogistic process Bacon has, in 
the second book of the Novum Organum, done for the inductive 
process ; that is to say, he has analysed it well. His rules are 
quite proper; but we do not need them, because they are drawn 
from our own constant practice. 



122 LORD BACON. 

But, though every body is constantly performing the process 
described in the second book of the Novum Organum, some 
men perform it well, and some perform it ill. Some are led by 
it to truth, and some to error. It led Franklin to discover the 
nature of lighting. It led thousands, who had less brains than 
Franklin, to believe in animal magnetism. But this was not 
because Franklin went through the process described by Bacon, 
and the dupes of Mesmer through a different process. The 
comparentia: and rejectiones of which we have given examples 
will be found in the most unsound inductions. We have heard 
that an eminent judge of the last generation was in the habit of 
jocosely propounding after dinner a theory, that the cause of 
the prevalence of Jacobinism was the practice of bearing three 
names. He quoted on the one side Charles James Fox, Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan, John Home Tooke, John Philpot Curran, 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Theobald Wolfe Tone. These were 
instantioe conv ententes. He then proceeded to cite instances 
absentia in proximo, William Pitt, John Scott, William Wind- 
ham, Samuel Horsley, Henry Dundas, Edmund Burke. He 
might have gone on to instances secundum magis et minus. 
The practice of giving children three names has been for some 
time a growing practice, and Jacobinism has also been growing. 
The practice of giving children three names is more common in 
America than in England. In England we still have a King 
and a House of Lords ; but the Americans are republicans. 
The rejectiones are obvious. Burke and Theobald Wolfe Tone 
are both Irishmen ; therefore the being an Irishman is not the 
cause of Jacobinism. Horsley and Home Tooke are both 
clergymen ; therefore being a clergyman is not the cause of Jacob- 
inism. Fox and Windham were both educated at Oxford ; there- 
fore the being educated at Oxford is not the cause of Jacobinism. 
Pitt and Home Tooke were both educated at Cambridge; there- 
fore the being educated at Cambridge is not the cause of Jacob- 
inism. In this way, our inductive philosopher arrives at what 



LOKD BACON. 123 

Bacon calls the Vintage, and pronounces that the having three 
names is the cause of Jacobinism. 

Here is an induction corresponding with Bacon's analysis, 
and ending in a monstrous absurdity. In what then does this 
induction differ from the induction which leads us to the con- 
clusion that the presence of the sun is the cause of our having 
more light by day than by night ? The difference evidently is 
not in the kind of instances, but in the number of instances ; 
that is to say, the difference is not in that part of the process 
for which Bacon has give precise rules, but in a circumstance 
for which no precise rule can possibly be given. If the learned 
author of the theory about Jacobinism had enlarged either oi 
his tables a little, his system would have been destroyed. The 
names of Tom Paine and "William Wyndham Grenvilk would 
have been sufficient to do the work. 

It appears to us, then, that the difference between a sound 
and unsound induction does not lie in this, that the author of 
the sound induction goes through the process analysed in the 
second book of the Novum Organum, and the author of the 
unsound induction through a different process. They both per- 
form the same process. But one performs it foolishly or care- 
lessly ; the other performs it with patience, attention, sagacity, 
and judgment. Now precepts can do little towards making 
men patient and attentive, and still less towards making them 
sagacious and judicious. It is very well to tell men to be on 
their guard against prejudices, not to believe facts on slight evi- 
dence, not to be content with a scanty collection of facts, to put 
out of their minds the idola which Bacon has so finely described. 
But these rules are too general to be of much practical use. 
The question is, "What is a prejudice ? How long does the in- 
credulity with which I hear a new theory propounded continue 
to be a wise and salutary incredulity ? When does it become 
an idolum specus, the unreasonable pertinacity of a too sceptical 
mind ? "What is slight evidence ? "What collection of facts is 



124 LORD BACON. 

scanty ? Will ten instances do, or fifty, or a hundred ? In 
how many months would the first human beings who settled on 
the shores of the ocean have been justified in believing that the 
moon had an influence on the tides? After how many experi- 
ments would Jenner have been justified in believing that he 
had discovered a safeguard against the small-pox ? These are 
questions to which it would be most desirable to have a precise 
answer ; but, unhappily, they are questions to which no precise 
answer can be returned. 

We think then that it is possible to lay down accurate rules, 
as Bacon has done, for the performing of that part of the induc- 
tive process which all men perform alike ; but that these rules, 
though accurate, are not wanted, because in truth they only tell 
us to do what we are all doing. We think that it is impossible 
to lay down any precise rule for the performing of that part of 
the inductive process which a great experimental philosopher 
performs in one way, and a superstitious old woman in another. 

On this subject, we think, Bacon was in an errors He cer- 
tainly attributed to his rules a value which did not belong to 
them. He went so far as to say, that, if his method of making 
discoveries were adopted, little would depend on the degree of 
force or acuteness of any intellect ; that all minds would be re- 
duced to one level ; that his philosophy resembled a compass or 
a rule which equalises all hands, and enables the most unprac- 
tised person to draw a more correct circle or line than the best 
draftsmen can produce without such aid.* This really seems to 
us as extravagant as it would have been in Lindley Murray to 
announce that every body who should learn his Grammar would 
write as good English as Dryden, or in that very able writer, the- 
Archbishop of Dublin, to promise that all the readers of his 
Logic would reason like Chillingworth, and that all the readers 
of his Bhetoric would speak like Burke. That Bacon was al- 

* Novum Organum, Prasf. and Lib. 1. Aph. 122. 



LORD BACON. 125 

together mistaken as to this point will now hardly be disputed. 
His philosophy has flourished during two hundred years, and 
has produced none of this levelling. The interval between a 
man of talents and a dunce is as wide as ever; and is never 
more clearly discernible than when they engage in researches 
which require the constant use of induction. 

It will be seen that we do not consider Bacon's ingenious 
analysis of the inductive method as a very useful performance. 
Bacon was not, as we have already said, the inventor of the 
inductive method. He was not even the person who first 
analysed the inductive method correctly, though he undoubtedly 
analysed it more minutely than any who preceded him. He 
was not the person who first showed that by the inductive 
method alone new truth could be discovered. But he was the 
person who first turned the minds of speculative men, long 
occupied in verbal disputes, to the discovery of new and useful 
truth; and, by doing so, he at once gave to the inductive 
method an importance and dignity which had never before 
belonged to it. He was not the maker of that road ; he waa 
not the discoverer of that road ; he was not the person who first 
surveyed and mapped that road. But he was the person who 
first called the public attention to an inexhaustible mine oi 
wealth, which had been utterly neglected, and which was 
accessible by that road alone. By doing so he caused that road, 
which had previously been trodden only by peasants and 
higglers, to be frequented by a higher class of travellers. 

That which was eminently his own in his system was the end 
which he proposed to himself. The end being given, the means, 
as it appears to us, could not well be mistaken. If others had 
aimed at the same object with Bacon, we hold it to be certain 
that they would have employed the same method with Bacon. 
It would have been hard to convince Seneca that the inventing 
of a safety-lamp was an employment worthy of a philosopher. 
It would have been hard to persuade Thomas Aquinas to descend 



126 LORD BACON. 

from the making of syllogisms to the making of gunpowder. 
But Seneca would never have doubted for a moment that it was 
only by means of a series of experiments that a safety-lamp 
could be invented. Thomas Aquinas would never have thought 
that his barbara and baralipton would enable him to ascertain 
the proportion which charcoal ought to bear to saltpetre in 
a pound of gunpowder. Neither common sense nor Aristotle 
would have suffered him to fall into such an absurdity. 

By stimulating men to the discovery of new truth, Bacon 
stimulated them to employ the inductive method, the only 
method, even the ancient philosophers and the schoolmen 
themselves being judges, by which new truth can be discovered. 
By stimulating men to the discovery of useful truth, he furnished 
them with a motive to perform the inductive process well and 
carefully. His predecessors had been, in his phrase, not in- 
terpreters, but anticipators of nature. They had been content 
with the first principles at which they had arrived by the most 
scanty and slovenly induction. And why was this ? It was, 
we conceive, because their philosophy proposed to itself no 
practical end, because it was merely an exercise of the mind. 
A man who wants to contrive a new machine or a new medicine 
has a strong motive to observe accurately and patiently, and to 
try experiment after experiment. But a man who merely wants 
a theme for disputation or declamation has no such motive. He 
is therefore content with premises grounded on assumption, or 
on the most scanty and hasty induction. Thus, we conceive, 
the schoolmen acted. On their foolish premises they often 
argued with great ability; and as their object was " assensum 
subjugare, non res/'* to be victorious in controversy, not to be 
victorious over nature, they were consistent. For just as much 
logical skill could be shown in reasoning on false as on true 
premises. But the followers of the new philosophy, proposing 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 29. 



LORD BACON, 127 

to themselves the. discovery of useful truth as their object, must 
have altogether failed of attaining that object if they had been 
content to build theories on superficial .induction. 

Bacon has remarked* that, in ages when philosophy was 
stationary, the mechanical arts went on improving. Why was 
this ? Evidently because the mechanic was not content with so 
careless a mode of induction as served the purpose of the 
philosopher. And why was the philosopher more easily satisfied 
than the mechanic? Evidently because the object of the 
mechanic was to mould things, whilst the object of the 
philosopher was only to mould words. Careful induction is not 
at all necessary to the making of a good syllogism. But it is 
indispensable to the making of a good shoe. Mechanics. 
therefore, have always been, as far as the range of their humble 
but useful callings extended, not anticipators but interpi-eters of 
nature. And when a philosophy arose, the object of which 
was to do on a large scale what the mechanic does on a small 
scale, to extend the power and to supply the wants of man, the 
truth of the premises, which logically is a matter altogether un- 
important, became a matter of the highest importance ; and the 
careless induction with which men of learning had previously 
been satisfied gave place, of necessity, to an induction far more 
accurate and satisfactory. 

What Bacon did for inductive philosophy may, we think, be 
fairly stated thus. The objects of preceding speculators were 
objects which could be attained without careful induction. 
Those speculators, therefore, did not perform the inductive 
process carefully. Bacon stirred up men to pursue an object 
which could be attained only by induction, and by induction 
carefully performed ; and consequently induction was more 
carefully performed. We do not think that the importance of 
what Bacon did for inductive philosophy has ever been over- 
rated. But we think that the nature of his services is often 
* De Augmentis, Lib. 1 . 



128 LORD BACON. 

mistaken, and was not fully understood even by himself. It 
was not by furnishing philosophers with rules for performing 
the inductive process well, but by furnishing them with a 
motive for performing it well, that he conferred so vast a 
benefit on society. 

To give to the human mind a direction which it shall retain 
for ages is the rare prerogative of a few imperial spirits. It 
cannot, therefore, be uninteresting to inquire what was the 
moral and intellectual constitution which enabled Bacon to 
exercise so vast an influence on the world. 

In the temper of Bacon, — we speak of Bacon the philosopher, 
not of Bacon the lawyer and politician, — there was a singular 
union of audacity and sobriety. The promises which he made 
to mankind might, to a superficial reader, seem to resemble 
the rants which -a great dramatist has put into the mouth of an 
Oriental conqueror half-crazed by good fortune and by violent 
passions. 

" He shall have chariots easier than air, 
Which I will have invented ; and thyself 
That art the messenger shall ride before him, 
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond, 
That shall be made to go with golden wheels, 
I know not how yet." 

But Bacon performed what he promised. In truth, Fletcher 
would not have dared to make Arbaces promise, in his wildest 
fits of excitement, the tithe of what the Baconian philosophy 
has performed. 

The true philosophical temperament may, we think, be 
described in four words, much hope, little faith ; a disposition 
to believe that any thing, however extraordinary, may be done ; 
an indisposition to believe that any thing extraordinary has 
been done. In these points the constitution of Bacon's mind 
seems to us to have been absolutely perfect. He was at once 
the Mammon and the Surly of his friend Ben. Sir Epicure did 



■LOUD BACON. 129 

not indulge in visions more magnificent and gigantic. Surly 
did not sift evidence with keener and more sagacious incredulity. 

Closely connected with this peculiarity of Bacon's temper 
was a striking peculiarity of his understanding. With great 
minuteness of observation, he had an amplitude of comprehen- 
sion such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other 
human being. The small fine mind of Labruyere had not a 
more delicate tact than the large intellect of Bacon. The Essays 
contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character, no 
peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court- 
masque, could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable 
of taking in the whole world of knowledge. His understanding 
resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince 
Ahmed. Fold it ; and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. 
Spread it; and the armies of powerful Sultans might repose 
beneath its shade. 

In keenness of observation he has been equalled, though 
perhaps never surpassed. But the largeness of his mind was all 
his own. The glance with which he surveyed the intellectual 
universe resembled that which the Archangel, from the golden 
threshold of heaven darted down into the new creation. 

" Round he surveyed, — and well might, where he stood 
So high above the circling canopy 
Of night's extended shade, — from eastern point — 
Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears 
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 
Beyond the horizon." 

His knowledge differed from that of other men, as a terres- 
trial globe differs from an Atlas which contains a different 
country on every leaf. The towns and roads of England, France, 
and Germany are better laid down in the Atlas than in the globe. 
But while we are looking at England we see nothing of France ; 
and while we are looking at France we see nothing of Germany 
i 



130 LOED BACON. 

We may go to the Atlas to learn the bearings and distances of 
York and Bristol, or of Dresden and Prague. But it is useless 
if we want to know the bearings and distances of France and 
Martinique, or of England and Canada. On the globe we shall 
not find all the market towns in our own neighbourhood ; but 
we shall learn from it the comparative extent and the relative 
position of all the kingdoms of the earth. " I have taken," said 
Bacon, in a letter written when he was only thirty-one to his 
uncle Lord Burleigh, " I have taken all knowledge to be my 
province." In any other young man, indeed in any other man, 
this would have been a ridiculous flight of presumption. There 
have been thousands of better mathematicians, astronomers, 
chemists, physicians, botanists, mineralogists, than Bacon. No 
man would go to Bacon's works to learn any particular science 
or art, any more than he would go to a twelve-inch globe in 
order to find his way from Kennington turnpike to Clapham 
Common. The art which Bacon taught was the art of invent- 
ing arts. The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men 
was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments ot 
knowledge. 

The mode in which he communicated his thoughts was 
peculiar to him. He had no touch of that disputatious temper 
which he often censured in his predecessors. He effected a 
vast intellectual revolution in opposition to a vast mass of 
prejudices ; yet he never engaged in any controversy : nay, we 
cannot at present recollect, in all his philosophical works, a 
single passage of a controversial character. All those works 
might with propriety have been put into the form which he 
adopted in the work entitled Cogitata et visa: "Franciscus 
Baconus sic cogitavit." These are thoughts which have occurred 
to me : weigh them well : and take them or leave them. 

Borgia said of the famous expedition of Charles the Eighth, 
that the French had conquered Italy not with steel, but with 
chalk ; for that the only exploit which they had found necessary 



LORD BACON. 131 

for the purpose of taking military occupation of any place had 
been to mark the doors of the houses where they meant to 
quarter. Bacon often quoted this saying, and loved to apply it 
to the victories of his own intellect.* His philosophy, he said, 
came as a guest, not as an enemy. She found no difficulty in 
gaining admittance, without a contest, into every understanding 
fitted, by its structure and by its capacity, to receive her. In all 
this we think that he acted most judiciously ; first, because, as 
he has himself remarked, the difference between his school and 
other schools was a difference so fundamental that there was 
hardly any common ground on which a controversial battle could 
be fought ; and, secondly, because his mind, eminently obser 
vant, preeminently discursive and capacious, was, we conceive, 
neither formed by nature nor disciplined by habit for dialectical 
combat. 

Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons 
of logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest decora- 
tions of rhetoric. His eloquence, though not untainted with the 
vicious taste of his age, would alone have entitled him to a 
high rank in literature. He had a wonderful talent for pack- 
ing thought close, and rendering it portable. In wit, if by wit 
be meant the power of perceiving analogies between things 
which appear to have nothing in common, he never had an 
equal, not even Cowley, not even the author of Hudibras. 
Indeed, he possessed this faculty, or rather this faculty pos- 
sessed him, to a morbid degree. When he abandoned himself 
to it without reserve, as he did in the Sapientia Veterum, 
and at the end of the second book of the De Augmentis, the 
feats which he performed were not merely admirable, but por- 
tentous, and almost shocking. On those occasions we marvel 
at him as clowns on a fair-day marvel at a juggler, and can 
hardly help thinking that the devil must be in him. 

These, hewever, were freaks in which his ingenuity now and 

* Novum Organum, Lib. 1. Aph. 35. and elsewhere, 
i 2 



132 LORD BACON. 

then wantoned, with scarcely any other object than to astonish 
find amuse. But it occasionally happened that, when he was 
engaged in grave and profound investigations, his wit ob- 
tained the mastery over all his other faculties, and led him 
into absurdities into which no dull man could possibly have 
fallen. We will give the most striking instance which at present 
occurs to us. In the third book of the De Augmentis he 
tells us that there are some principles which are not peculiar 
to one science, but are common to several. That part of 
philosophy which concerns itself with these principles is, in his 
nomenclature, designated as philosophia prima. He then pro- 
ceeds to mention some of the principles with which this phi- 
losophia prima is conversant. One of them is this. An infec- 
tious disease is more likely to be communicated while it is in 
progress than when it has reached its height. This, says he, is 
true in medicine. It is also true in morals ; for we see that the 
example of very abandoned men injures public morality less 
than the example of men in whom vice has not yet extinguished 
all good qualities. Again, he tells us that in music a discord 
ending in a concord is agreeable, and that the same thing may 
be noted in the affections. Once more, he tells us that in physics 
the energy with which a principle acts is often increased by 
the antiperistasis of its opposite ; and that it is the same in the 
contests of factions. If the making of ingenious and sparkling 
similitudes like these be indeed the philosophia prima, we are 
quite sure that the greatest philosophical work of the nineteenth 
century is Mr. Moore's Lalla Rookh. The similitudes which 
we have cited are very happy similitudes. But that a man 
like Bacon should have taken them for more, that he should 
have thought the discovery of such resemblances as these an 
important part of philosophy, has always appeared to us one of 
the most singular facts in the history of letters. 

The truth is that his mind was wonderfully quick in perceiv- 
ing analogies of all sorts. But, like several eminent men whom 



LORD BACON. 133 

we could name, both living and dead, he sometimes appeared 
strangely deficient in the power of distinguishing rational from 
fanciful analogies, analogies which are arguments from analogies 
which are mere illustrations, analogies like that which Bishop 
Butler so ably pointed out, between natural and revealed religion, 
from analogies like that which Addison discovered, between the 
series of Grecian gods carved by Phidias and the series of English 
kings painted by Kneller. This want of discrimination has led to 
many strange political speculations. Sir "William Temple deduced 
a theory of government from the properties of the pyramid. Mr. 
Southey's whole system of finance is grounded on the phenomena 
of evaporation and rain. In theology, this perverted ingenuity 
has made still wilder work. From the time of Irenseus and Origen 
down to the present day, there has not been a single generation 
in which great divines have not been led into the most absurd 
expositions of Scripture, by mere incapacity to distinguish ana- 
logies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from analogies meta- 
phorical.* It is curious that Bacon has himself mentioned this 
very kind of delusion among the idola specus ; and has men- 
tioned it in language which, we are inclined to think, shows that 
he knew himself to be subject to it. It is the vice, he tells us, 
of subtle minds to attach too much importance to slight distinc- 
tions ; it is the vice, on the other hand, of high and discursive 
intellects to attach too much importance to slight resemblances; 
and he adds that, when this last propensity is indulged to excess, 
it leads men to catch at shadows instead of substances.f 

Yet we cannot wish that Bacon's wit had been less luxuriant. 
For, to say nothing of the pleasure which it affords, it was in 
the vast majority of cases employed for the purpose of making 
obscure truth plain, of making repulsive truth attractive, of 



* See some interesting remarks on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's Minute 
Philosopher, Dialogue IV. 

f Novum Organum, Lib. 1 Aph. 55. 
I 3 



134 LORD BACON. 

fixing in the mind for ever truth which might otherwise have 
left but a transient impression. 

The poetical faculty was powerful in Bacon's mind, but not, 
like his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of 
his reason, and to tyrannize over the whole man. No imagin- 
ation was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated. 
It never stirred but at a signal from good sense. It stopped at 
the first check from good sense. Yet, though disciplined to such 
obedience, it gave noble proofs of its vigour. In truth, much 
of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world, amidst things as 
strange as any that are described in the Arabian Tales, or in 
those romances on which the curate and barber of Don Quixote's 
village performed so cruel an auto defe, amidst buildings more 
sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonder- 
ful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid 
than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable 
than the lance of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the 
balsam of Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there 
was nothing wild, nothing but what sober reason sanctioned. 
He knew that all the secrets feigned by poets to have been 
written in the books of enchanters are worthless when compared 
with the mighty secrets which are really written in the book 
of nature, and which, with time and patience, will be read there. 
He knew that all the wonders wrought by all the talismans in 
fable were trifles compared to the wonders which might reason- 
ably be expected from the philosophy of fruit, and that, if his 
words sank deep into the minds of men, they would produce 
effects such as superstition had never ascribed to the incanta- 
tions of Merlin and Michael Scot. It was here that he loved to 
let his imagination loose. He loved to picture to himself the 
world as it would be when his philosophy should, in his own 
noble phrase, " have enlarged the bounds of human empire." * 
We might refer to many instances. But we will content our- 
* New Atlantis. 



LOKD BACON. 135 

selves with the strongest, the description of the House of Solo- 
mon in the New Atlantis. By most of Bacon's contemporaries, 
and by some people of our time, this remarkable passage would, 
we doubt not, be considered as an ingenious rodomontade, a 
counterpart to the adventures of Sinbad or Baron Munchausen. 
The truth is that there is not to be found in any human com- 
position a passage more eminently distinguished by profound and 
serene wisdom. The boldness and originality of the fiction is 
far less wonderful than the nice discernment which carefully 
excluded from that long list of prodigies every thing that can be 
pronounced impossible, every thing that can be proved to lie 
beyond the mighty magic of induction and of time. Already 
some parts, and not the least startling parts, of this glorious pro- 
phecy have been accomplished, even according to the letter ; and 
the whole, construed according to the spirit, is daily accomplish- 
ing all around us. 

One of the most remarkable circumstances in the history 
of Bacon's mind is the order in which its powers expanded 
themselves. With him the fruit came first and remained to 
the last ; the blossoms did not appear till late. In general, 
the development of the fancy is to the development of the judg- 
ment what the growth of a girl is to the growth of a boy. The 
fancy attains at an earlier period to the perfection of its 
beauty, its power, and its fruitfulness ; and, as it is first to 
ripen, it is also first to fade. It has generally lost something 
of its bloom and freshness before the sterner faculties have 
reached maturity ; and is commonly withered and barren while 
those faculties still retain all their energy. It rarely happens 
that the fancy and the judgment grow together. It happens 
still more rarely that the judgment grows faster than the fancy. 
This seems, however, to have been the case with Bacon. His 
boyhood and youth appear to have been singularly sedate. His 
gigantic scheme of philosophical reform is said by some writers 
to have been planned before he was fifteen, and was undoubtedly 



136 LORD BACON. 

planned while he was still young. He observed as vigilantly, 
meditated as deeply, and judged as temperately when he gave 
his first work to the world as at the close of his long career. 
But in eloquence, in sweetness and variety of expression, and in 
richness of illustration, his latter writings are far superior to 
those of his youth. In this respect the history of his mind bears 
some resemblance to the history of the mind of Burke. The 
treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, though written on a sub- 
ject which the coldest metaphysician could hardly treat without 
being occasionally betrayed into florid writing, is the most un- 
adorned of all Burke's works. It appeared when he was twenty- 
five or twenty-six. When, at forty, he wrote the Thoughts on 
the Causes of the existing Discontents, his reason and his judg- 
ment had reached their full maturity ; but his eloquence was 
still in its splendid dawn. At fifty, his rhetoric was quite as 
rich as good taste would permit ; and when he died, at almost 
seventy, it had become ungracefully gorgeous. In his youth he 
wrote on the emotions produced by mountains and cascades, by 
the master-pieces of painting and sculpture, by the faces and 
necks of beautiful women, in the style of a parliamentary report. 
In his old age he discussed treaties and tariffs in the most fervid 
and brilliant language of romance. It is strange that the Essay 
on the Sublime and Beautiful, and the Letter to a Noble Lord, 
should be the productions of one man. But it is far more 
strange that the Essay should have been a production of his 
youth, and the Letter of his old age. 

We will give very short specimens of Bacon's two styles. In 
1597, he wrote thus: "Crafty men contemn studies; simple 
men admire them ; and wise men use them ; for they teach not 
their own use : that is a wisdom Avithout them, and won by ob- 
servation. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh 
and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swal- 
lowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading 
maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact 



LORD BACON. 137 

man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have 
a great memory ; if he confer little, have a present wit ; and if 
he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth 
not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics 
subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric 
able to contend." It will hardly be disputed that this is a pas- 
sage to be " chewed and digested." We do not believe that 
Thucydides himself has any where compressed so much thought 
into so small a space. 

In the additions which Bacon afterwards made to the Essays 
there is nothing superior in truth or weight to what we have 
quoted. But his style was constantly becoming richer and softer. 
The following passage, first published in 1625, will show the 
extent of the change : " Prosperity is the blessing of the Old 
Testament ; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth 
the greater benediction and the clearer evidence of God's favour. 
Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp 
you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols ; and the pencil 
of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflic- 
tions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not 
without many fears and distastes. ; and adversity is not without 
comforts and hopes. We see in needle-works and embroideries 
it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn 
ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a light- 
some ground. Judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart 
by the pleasure of the eye. ^Certainly virtue is like precious 
odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed ; for 
prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best 
discover virtue." 

It is by the Essays that Bacon is best known to the multitude. 
The Novum Organum and the De Augmentis are much talked 
of. but little read. They have produced indeed a vast effect on 
the opinions of mankind ; but they have produced it through 
the operation of intermediate agents. They have moved the in- 



138 LORD BACON. 

tellects which have moved the world. It is in the Essays alone 
that the mind of Bacon is brought into immediate contact with 
the minds of ordinary readers. There he opens an exoteric 
school and talks to plain men, in language which every body un- 
derstands, about things in which every body is interested. He 
has thus enabled those who must otherwise have taken his merits 
on trust to judge for themselves; and the great body of readers 
have, during several generations, acknowledged that the man who 
has treated with such consummate ability questions with which 
they are familiar may well be supposed to deserve all the praise 
bestowed on him by those who have sat in his inner school. 

Without any disparagement to the admirable treatise De 
Augmentis, we must say that, in our judgment, Bacon's greatest 
performance is the first book of the Novum Organum. All the 
peculiarities of his extraordinary mind are found there in the 
highest perfection. Many of the aphorisms, but particularly 
those in which he gives examples of the influence of the idola, 
show a nicety of observation that has never been surpassed. 
Every part of the book blazes with wit, but with wit which is 
employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever 
made so great a revolution in the mode of thinking, overthrew 
so many prejudices, introduced so many new opinions. Yet no 
book was ever written in a less contentious spirit. It truly 
conquers with chalk and not with steel. Proposition after pro- 
position enters into the mind, is received not as an invader, but 
as a welcome friend, and, though previously unknown, becomes 
at once domesticated. But what we most admire is the vast 
capacity of that intellect which, without effort, takes in at once 
all the domains of science, all the past, the present, and the 
future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the encouraging 
signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of the coming 
age. Cowley, who was among the most ardent, and not among 
the least discerning followers of the new philosophy, has, in one 



LORD BACON. 139 

of his finest poems, compared Bacon to Moses standing on Mount 
Pisgah. It is to Bacon, we think, as he appears in the first book 
of the Novum Organum, that the comparison applies with pe- 
culiar felicity. There we see the great Lawgiver looking round 
from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse ; behind him a 
wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters in which successive 
generations have sojourned, always moving, yet never advancing, 
reaping no harvest, and building no abiding city ; before him 
a goodly land, a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and 
honey. While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile 
desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every 
side by a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mi- 
rage, he was gazing from a far higher stand on a far lovelier 
country, following with his eye the long course of fertilising 
rivers, through ample pastures, and under the bridges of great 
capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens, and por- 
tioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba. 

It is painful to turn back from contemplating Bacon's philoso- 
phy to contemplate his life. Yet without so turning back it is 
impossible fairly to estimate his powers. He left the University 
at an earlier age than that at which most people repair thither. 
While yet a boy he was plunged into the midst of diplomatic 
business. Thence he passed to the study of a vast technical 
system of law, and worked his way up through a succession of 
laborious offices to the highest post in his profession. In the 
mean time he took an active part in every parliament ; he was 
an adviser of the Crown : he paid court with the greatest 
assiduity and address to all whose favour was likely to be of use 
to him ; he lived much in society ; he noted the slightest pecu- 
liarities of character and the slightest changes of fashion. 
Scarcely any man has led a more stirring life than that which 
Bacon led from sixteen to sixty. Scarcely any man has been 
better entitled to be called a thorough man of the world. The 



140 LORD BACON. 

founding of a new philosophy, the imparting of a new direction 
to the minds of speculators, this was the amusement of his leisure, 
the work of hours occasionally stolen from the Woolsack and the 
Council Board. This consideration, while it increases the 
admiration with which we regard his intellect, increases also our 
regret that such an intellect should so often have been unwor- 
thily employed. He well knew the better course, and had, at 
one time, resolved to pursue it. {t I confess," said he in a letter 
written when he was still young, " that I have as vast contem- 
plative ends as I have moderate civil ends." Had his civil ends 
continued to be moderate, he would have been, not only the 
Moses, but the Joshua of philosophy. He would have fulfilled 
a large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have- 
led his followers, not only to the verge, but into the heart of the 
promised land. He would not merely have pointed out, but 
would have divided the spoil. Above all, he would have left, 
not only a great, but a spotless name. Mankind would then 
have been able to esteem their illutitiious benefactor. "We should 
not then be compelled to regard his character with mingled con- 
tempt and admiration, with mingled aversion and gratitude. 
We should not then regret that there should be so many proofs 
of the narrowness and selfishness of a heart, the benevolence of 
which was yet large enough to take in all races and all ages. 
We should not then have to blush for the disingenuousness 
of the most devoted worshipper of speculative truth, for the 
servility of the boldest champion of intellectual freedom. We 
should not then have seen the same man at one time far in the 
van, and at another time far in the rear of his generation. We 
should not then be forced to own that he who first treated legis- 
lation as a science was among the last Englishmen who used the 
rack, that he who first summoned philosophers to the great work 
of interpreting nature was among the last Englishmen who sold 
justice. And v^e should conclude our survey of a life placidly, 



LORD BACON. 141 

honourably, beneficently passed, " in industrious observations, 
grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and disco- 
veries," * with feelings very different from those with which 
we, now turn away from the checkered spectacle of so much 
glory and so much shame. 

* From a letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh. 



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